


born and raised in an earthquake state

by inlovewithnight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Smuggling, child trafficking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 23:32:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16377134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: Han and Chewie have a job, one that's a little more complex than it looked at first. They pick up some help along the way, whether they want it or not.Set between Solo and Rogue One.





	born and raised in an earthquake state

Entawa Station had been falling apart for years, until the Empire seized it. Now it was a maze-like mix of the renovated and the decaying, with state of the art scanners bolted on to beams that had been hollowed out by metal scavengers over the decades and Imperial troops barracked in rooms with walls honeycombed with blaster scars.

Entawa was an unpopular assignment among the troops, and an even less popular destination for honest traders and travelers, especially since the seizure and forced Imperial presence. But it was still a favorite bolt-hole for smugglers, scam artists, and the general jetsam of the galaxy. The sense that everything could fall apart at any moment made it feel like home.

Chewie disagreed.

“I know it’s not like _your_ home,” Han said wearily, following the guidance droid in toward their docking bay. “It was just a saying. Feels like home. It’s not literal.”

[It could be literal about Corellia,] Chewie said sourly. [I’ve heard it’s just as much of a trash pile as this place.]

“That’s rude. That’s a rude thing to say.” Han signaled acknowledgment the droid and brought their shuttle up to align with the airlock. “I don’t say rude things about Kashyyk, do I? No. I’m respectful about your homeland.”

[You hate Corellia too.]

“I do not.” Han stared out the viewscreen at the scarred hull of Entawa for a moment, not seeing the pitted metal but instead the acid rain clouds forming over the family barracks back home. The workers’ families got quarters and half-rations, as long as the working member of the family was in good standing and the kids were promised to sign on when they came of age. Things weren’t bad there, not until—

The airlock whistled and wailed as it connected, leaving Chewie cursing and punching at the control panel. “I know,” Han muttered, falling back into the moment and turning his attention to powering down the shuttle. “I wish we had the Falcon, too.”

The Falcon was in mid-term storage in a facility on Qu’bar, paid in advance (it hurt Han’s soul to do it, but he had to keep that ship safe) and secure until they finished this job. A YT-1300f Corellian light freighter was too noticeable and not nearly disposable enough for this run. After flying the Falcon, though, piloting one of these shuttles was like trying to steer a bathtub through space. Neither Han nor Chewie were having a good time.

“We lay low tonight,” he said as they walked into Entawa and showed their forged ID chips to the waiting droid. It beeped and let them though without making a fuss about Han’s blaster, and Han silently thanked whatever might be watching out for them out here that the station hadn’t gotten civilized enough to demand peace-bonds or weapon surrender. Some places still understood a body’s right to freedom.

He could almost hear Beckett laughing at him in the back of his head. _Don’t get cocky, kid. What do you know about freedom, anyway? You’re a slave to your emotions and your ghosts, you’re not ever gonna be free._

Han gritted his teeth and kept walking, vaguely aware of Chewie falling into step a pace behind him. He was going to purge those ghosts if it was the last thing he did. The emotions, too. Get rid of all of it and be a free man, truly, wandering the galaxy not owing anything to anyone.

[Watch where you’re going,] Chewie said, his paw landing heavily on Han’s shoulder. [Unless you’re trying to get yourself killed.]

Han obediently came to a halt, blinking rapidly. He’d almost walked right into the path of a Stormtrooper squadron. Shit. 

[You promised you weren’t suicidal.] Chewie shook him a little, not hard enough to hurt but enough that his teeth clicked together. [You promised you were over the girl.]

“I am.” He was. The job for the Hutt on Tatooine—that had taken a while, plenty of time for his heart to heal. Plenty of opportunities for dalliances, too, and he’d gone for at least, what, half of them. And the time _after_ that job, the running and hiding and fake names and going underground until Jabba’s crew gave up the chase; that was even more healing, and dallying with pretty women and nongendered types and—

[Then watch where you’re going.] Chewie cuffed his head gently. [We need to eat. Let’s go over there.]

Han let him lead the way this time, keeping one hand loosely on the butt of his blaster while Chewie cut across the walkway to a dingy-looking bar with a sign in the window promising Alderaanian cuisine and Mon Calamaria kelp wine.

“I can’t believe you drink that stuff.” Han shook his head as they pulled up stools at the bar. “It’s _nothing_ like anything I’ve ever seen from Kashyyk.”

[Kind of like moss wine,] Chewie said, shrugging as he waved down the bartender. [Not exactly, but close. Anyway, I can like things that aren’t from Kashyyk.]

“Right. Sorry.” Han rested his chin in his hand and stared at the menu while Chewie haggled over the price of a bottle. Maybe after this job they’d have enough money to take a vacation. They could go to Alderaan, even. See the estates of the royal family. He’d heard their princess was a real looker, the jewel of the whole system. 

They ate in silence, Chewie watching the Rancor pit fights on the vid display over the bar and Han trying to be subtle in checking his messaging unit every ten minutes in case something changed with the meeting tomorrow. He didn’t have a name or image of the contact, just a location and passphrase to recognize each other. He might be pretty new at this whole game, but that still didn’t strike him as a great way to start.

It wasn’t like he was swimming in options, though. A job was a job, and when you had already pissed off Jabba the Hutt, the jobs were thin on the ground.

[You want to put a wager on the next round?] Chewie asked, nodding at the vid display. [I’ve seen Kill Breath fight before, no way Rot Fang beats him.]

“It’s your money, pal. Do what you want with it.”

Chewie gave him a suffering look. [But if we went in together, that’s twice as much.]

“I’m not feeling it. Gotta save my luck for this job.”

[That’s not how luck works.]

“I gotta go with my gut, Chewie.” Han drained his glass and signaled the bartender for another. “If you’re gonna get a bet in you better hurry, though, instead of arguing with me.”

Han’s grasp of Shyriiwook didn’t extend to what Chewie said before stalking across the room to the Glorn in the corner taking bets, but he caught the general meaning. He checked his messaging unit again and sighed. It was going to be a long night rotation.

**

Chewie won enough to be smug and annoying. “Okay, okay,” Han said wearily as they walked from the shuttle to their meeting coordinates the next day rotation. “I promise that next time I will trust you and buy in. Okay? Are you happy now?”

[We could have bought a new power dilator for the Falcon.] Chewie stomped along, pausing to glower at a cluster of Kowakian monkey-lizards scrambling over an abandoned power grid panel.

“The power dilator is fine.”

[It has maybe six standard months left.]

“Six months is a long time.”

[Not in the scheme of things.]

“I don’t have time to worry about the scheme of things. One job at a time, Chewie. One _day_ at a time. That’s the only way to live.”

Chewie produced a thick, musky scent that was the Wookie equivalent of rolling his eyes. Han walked faster. They needed to get to this meeting, get the details of the assignment, and get going. 

The coordinates turned out to be a long-abandoned storage unit, the door ripped off the hinges and acid scars dribbled across the flooring. A droid stood in the center of the space—a bipedal unit, early-model L3. Han felt a strange jolt go through his chest, looking at it. Of course there were a lot of L3’s out there, there was no reason for this one to remind him of Lando’s talkative, overly independent droid whose memory bank was still steering the Falcon, but…

He still had a lot of work to do at banishing ghosts from his memory.

“What’s the weather on Yavin these days?” he asked, his fingers curled around the butt of his blaster.

The droid focused on him, lights flickering behind its ocular display. “Raining lizards and frogs,” it said in a voice with the same clipped diction of Lando’s L3, but a male tone. 

That was the correct passcode. Han stepped into the storage unit, leaving Chewie to cover his back. “So, what’s the job?”

“Transfer of goods between two locations.”

Han gritted his teeth; there was no point getting mad at droids for being literal, but there was also no denying how satisfying it would be to punt one out an airlock. “What are the goods? What are the locations?”

A panel opened on the droid’s abdomen and a pincher extended, holding a data chip. “For security purposes, this chip includes half of the information for the complete job. It will direct you to a secondary contact, who is holding the goods in escrow.”

Han took the chip and tucked it safely away before he let his frustration show. “In _escrow_? I thought this was a simple transport job.”

The L3 was, of course, unperturbed. “These steps are being taken for security purposes.”

“And you can’t provide any more details than that.”

The ocular display flickered again. “No.”

“Chewie, tear its arms off.”

Chewie gave off that eye-rolling scent again. [That threat’s not as effective for droids.]

“Your companion is quite right,” the L3 said. “Detaching my limbs will not cause me to override my master’s orders to maintain discretion. The information that you need is on that chip. I suggest you take it and get to work.”

Han sighed and stepped back, careful not to turn his blind side to the droid. Discretionary programming and “shoot somebody” programming could absolutely coexist. He’d learned that the hard way. “I hate droids.”

“That is an offensive and hurtful statement.”

“Well, you won’t remember it after your next maintenance wipe.”

“Also very hurtful.”

[Stop taunting,] Chewie said, his paw settling on Han’s shoulder and tugging him back toward the corridor. [We’ve got the chip, let’s see what the job is. I’ll even pay for lunch.]

“Big of you,” Han muttered, letting Chewie steer him away down the hall. 

[One of us has to be.] 

He said it so serenely, they were halfway back to the shuttle before it occurred to Han to wonder if he had just been insulted.

**

The data chip took them out past the Sardas Belt to K’triqta, a planet whose primary sentient species was reptilian, and on which Chewie flatly refused to set foot.

“You have to,” Han said through clenched teeth. “I can’t do the whole pickup by myself.”

[I’m not going out there.] Chewie shook his head and wailed softly, all of his back and shoulder fur puffed up in fear. [I can smell them already!]

“They’re not going to attack you for no reason!”

[They smell like death!]

“That’s a rude thing to say. You’re being very rude.”

Chewie shook his head again and planted himself in the copilot’s chair. _Not moving_ was written over every inch of him. Great. Just… great.

Han pulled up the meeting information on his screen again. The meeting was with a K’triq agent of the Blue Storm syndicate, and what was it with these crime syndicates and picking names based on a color and some kind of natural phenomena? Stupid. Just stupid. The agent would give them the other half of the information on the job, presumably including what they were transporting and where they were taking it, then guide them to this third party that was holding the goods in escrow.

It was all so needlessly complicated, and bureaucratic, that maybe it really wasn’t that dangerous. Would someone who bothered building in this many layers of security really be inclined to include a trap door and some backstabbing?

_Yes_. Obviously. It didn’t take a kid who grew up under Lady Proxima’s talons to see that.

“Chewie,” he said as patiently as he could. “I really need you to have my back on this. That’s what partners do, bud. That’s how this works.”

Chewie squirmed in his seat, a low trill rolling in his throat. 

“I know you don’t _want_ to, and I promise, I am not taking this for granted. But if I go out there on my own, I might get shot in the back, or stabbed, or… I don’t know. Fed to a snake. And you don’t want that, do you?”

The trill got lower and even less happy. [No.]

“So come with me, and we’ll do this together. Partners. I promise, I will owe you one.”

Chewie sighed and gave him a skeptical look through his forehead fringe. [Partners don’t owe each other. That’s not how it works.]

Han had to laugh. “You’re too good for this life, bud, you know that?”

[Yes.]

“Walked right into that one.” Han went to the closet where they’d stored most of their personal weapons on the shuttle, it lacking a proper armory or even a semi-proper one like the Falcon’s. “Let’s arm up and get going. We need to move fast.”

[We’re meeting them at a temple?] Chewie came to join him, adjusting his bandoliers and settling his blaster on his hip.

“That’s what it says. I think it’s an old temple, though, not an active one. Desanctified.”

A thoughtful hum. [Do you believe in religion?]

Han blinked. “What?”

[I don’t think a temple can ever really be desanctified. If it was a god’s house, or a spirit’s house, just because they move on doesn’t mean it _stops_ being their house. If power was there, it must change things. It doesn’t just stop.]

“I had no idea you thought about things like that.”

Chewie shrugged. [A hundred and ninety years, you think about most things at least a little bit.]

“Well, I don’t think about any of it.” Han buckled his holster belt and slammed the cabinet. “The only religion I believe in is the religion of saving my skin and looking out for number one.”

[And your partner, I hope.]

“Yeah, him too.” Han rolled his eyes. “At least you don’t believe in the Force, though. I’ve got _no_ time for that nonsense.”

Chewie stared at him for a long moment, so still Han could see a mong-louse crawling along his shoulder.

[I didn’t think anyone rejected the Force,] he finally said.

“Well, now you know.” Han shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable under that steady stare. “Let’s get going. And you need to wash with the qa-mong soap when we’re back out there. You’re infested again and I don’t want it getting all over the rest of the ship.”

[I’m not _infested_. Maybe one or two, that’s not infested!]

“Just take a shower! It’s not difficult!” The relief of bickering about something neutral, something easy, was so thick it caught in Han’s throat. What would he do if he ever had a partner who made him face up to things instead of letting them drift off forgotten into corners? He wouldn’t be able to stand it.

Facing things was how they got you. They dug in with all their claws as soon as you couldn’t look away. Weighted you down. Suffocated you. Han wasn’t having any of that, not now, not ever. He had learned his lesson. Corellia, Qir’a, the war, Beckett, those damn kids lined up to fight and die for made-up ideals on the shitty beach of that shitty planet. 

He was free from _all_ of it, and he was going to stay that way. No looking back. No slowing down.

**

Their K’triq contact was coiled inside the temple, studying an elaborately carved wall paneling that showed some kind of procession of snakes wound around upright poles. Chewie made a miserable noise at the sight of kir. Han elbowed him in the stomach and offered the back of his left hand, where he’d drawn the sigil that served as their passcode.

The K’triq eyed it for a moment, tongue flickering slowly in and out, then inclined kir head to show the matching sigil marked under kir jaw. “Greetings. Long may the Blue Storm rage.”

“Yeah. All hail the wind and clouds.” He wasn’t sure that was quite right, and by the way the K’triq’s pupils narrowed, it probably wasn’t. Still. They needed to keep moving. “You have a disk for us?”

“Yes. And I will guide you to the contact holding the payload.” Kii paused for a moment, tongue flicking rapidly. “Your companion is troubled.”

“Nothing personal.” Han slid his foot back and to the left, trying to kick Chewie in the ankle without looking. “Just wound up about the job. You know how it is.” 

Kii hissed softly, and while Han wasn’t entirely tuned in to the nuances of K’triq communication, he would guess it was a skeptical sound. “Well. If you say so.” Kii produced a data disk from kir wrap and handed it over. “Follow me, please.”

“Can’t we look at this first?”

“There’s no time.” Kii moved swiftly, undulating across the temple and out the door before Han could pull himself together. He cursed under his breath and scrambled after kir, Chewie following and still grumbling in distress.

The K’triq led them down the main city street that centered on the temple, then veered off into side alleys, zigzagging along until Han felt hopelessly lost. A glance at the sky reassured him that the temple was still visible, and he could navigate off it if all else failed—but it would take a long damn time to work their way back through this maze, and they would be vulnerable as Plonian skunk bats the whole time.

“Are you having any luck keeping track of this, bud?” he asked, swerving around a tall, flowering shrub of some kind that was growing right in the middle of the alleyway.

[No.] Chewie sounded seven kinds of miserable. [Careful not to touch those flowers, they smell toxic.]

“Great. You sure?”

[No. But it’s a bad smell. Probably wouldn’t kill you, but I bet they’d cause a rash.]

Their guide hesitated at the next turn of the alley, tail twitching impatiently until the two of them caught up to kir. “We’re losing time.”

“What, is the contact going to leave if we don’t show up on the dot?” Han rested his hands on his knees and dragged in a few deep breaths. “I’m too old for this shit.”

[You’re an infant,] Chewie said, at the same moment the K’triq said “You’re a mere hatchling.”

“Nice that you two can find common ground.” Han straightened and wiped his hands on his jacket. “Too bad it’s at my expense. You didn’t answer the question, though. Is the contact going to leave if we’re late?”

“No,” the K’triq said after a moment’s consideration. “But kii easily becomes irritable and impatient.”

“Kii?” Han glanced at Chewie. “The contact is another K’triq?”

“Oh, no.” Kir tongue-flick was clearly one of amusement this time. “We can’t be expected to keep track of your human genders. It’s much more simple to use a reasonable, neutral term. Come on, then. We’re perhaps another ten silanas away.”

“Apparently more simple to use reasonable, neutral units of time that neither of us understand, too.” Han tried not to sound petulant, he really did, but from the tail-swish that accompanied the K’triq’s resumed motion down the alley, he failed. 

Ten silanas later—and Han still had no concept of what that translated to in standard units, because the city was too disorienting—they arrived at a small, vaguely cone-shaped building made of some dark, heavily textured material. Han looked at the K’triq and remembered the reptilian nests he’d seen on some of the swampy and jungle places he’d dipped in and out of since he left Corellia. It probably wasn’t too much of a leap to guess that this was some kind of traditional K’triqa housing and he shouldn’t make any comments about it.

Chewie groaned in distress. [I’m not going to fit in there.]

Han couldn’t argue. No Wookie past childhood was even going to fit through the door. “Stay here and guard the entrance, I guess. If I need backup, I’ll shoot something.”

[You always do.]

They could argue about that later. Han slipped the safety strap on his holster and followed the K’triq into the building. 

Inside, there was a small vestibule, but they didn’t pause, just moved down a short hallway that led into an open chamber that, to Han’s eye, filled enough space to be the only room in the building. The light was dim, the air warm and humid, the floor littered with cushions and blankets made of stiff, flexible material that reminded him of the leaves on those other semi-tropical worlds.

On the far side of the room facing the entrance stood a stack of study, Imperial-standard shipping crates, probably ten or a dozen, labeled _Fragile_ and _Handle with Care_ in Standard. 

Sitting next to them, smoking a cigar and dressed in a Na’rundan silk suit that shimmered a hundred different colors in the faint light, was Lando Calrissian.

Han missed a moment, his hand tightening on the butt of his blaster and then sliding away from it to fall loosely at his side. Lando looked up—a slow, practiced motion, brimming with calculated drama—but when he saw Han, his poise slipped for a moment, too, his mouth falling open as they stared at each other.

Lando recovered first. “ _You_?”

“Me.” Han moved away from the entrance, turning his back to the wall and trying to keep one eye on the hallway and the other on the K’triq. That meant leaving Lando unwatched, but at the moment, that was the safest option. “You’re working for Blue Storm?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Lando’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have an ex in this syndicate, too?” 

Han’s hand itched to make a fist. “I’m just a ship for hire trying to make a living.” 

“And how is my ship?”

“Not yours anymore.” They glared at each other for a moment, and Han gave himself a point on the mental scoreboard of Solo vs. Calrissian. Somehow things never made it out of a draw. “I thought you were retired, what are you doing here running shipments for Blue Storm?”

“I’m not doing anything _for_ Blue Storm. Not in the way you’re implying.” Lando tugged his jacket collar higher and slouched in his chair. “I don’t work for them.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“A friend called in a favor.” Disdain fairly dripped off the words. Han couldn’t think of anyone else who could muster that much outraged dignity while sitting inside a giant snake nest. “It seemed more prudent at the time to help out than let him keep that favor for a rainy day. You might have noticed that the rain is getting harder and harder out there.”

Han blinked. “Care to put that in Standard instead of metaphor?”

Lando’s face broke into a smile for a moment before he caught himself again. “Not really. If you can’t keep up, that’s your own problem, Solo.”

“You know what, Lando, I’ve had just about enough of you and your—”

The acoustics of the room were, of course, perfectly set up to amplify the K’triq’s voice going from a hiss to a shout. “Please!” 

They both turned to face her, Han ducking his head reflexively. “Sorry about that, friend. We have a bit of a history.”

“It won’t keep you from removing this shipment from this planet?”

“Of course not,” Lando said, his voice sliding into that extra-charming register he could summon out of nowhere. Where did he learn to do that with his voice? Could Han learn? It seemed useful. “I’m glad to transfer the goods to Solo, here, and keep things moving.”

“Hmm.” Another tail flick. “Well, then, may I suggest you get started? We agreed to serve as a transfer point, not a vacation spot.”

“I assure you,” Lando said earnestly, “while K’triqta absolutely falls on my list of sites to vacation, this visit is entirely for business, and we’ll get things moving along right away.”

Kii did not look impressed, but Han wasn’t entirely sure if kir face was capable of it, anyway. “Follow me, please.”

Lando gestured at the stack of crates. “They’re on a hover pallet, Solo, if you wouldn’t mind steering that along with us.”

“I might mind. Why can’t you do it?”

Lando gave him a withering look and twitched his jacket over his shoulders. “Because I’m turning them over to your handling and it might as well happen here and now.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t want responsibility in my hands until we’re at the ship. We’ll do the handoff there, as they go on board.”

Lando exhaled slowly, teeth clenched. “You make it difficult to like you, Han. Has anyone told you that before?”

Han summed his most winning smile. “Everyone loves me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please!” the K’triq called from the entryway, all patience gone from kir voice. Lando took the pallet control from his pocket and set it moving, falling into step behind it. Han took up a place next to him, not quite enough to bump their shoulders together.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice,” he said, pitching his voice low enough that their guide wouldn’t hear, “that you said this planet is on your list of vacation spots, but not _where_ on the list.”

The corner of Lando’s mouth twitched, not quite into a smile. “It’s… not in the bottom five. I’ve been told that the beachfronts are lovely and undeveloped.”

“Because they’re a reptilian species and would die out on the sand?”

“Mm. It wasn’t put quite that bluntly.” Lando did break into a smile as they reached the street and he saw Chewie waiting. “The Wookie! Chewbacca, right? Are you ready to leave this loser in the dust and sign on with me?”

[Make me an offer,] Chewie trilled, and Han glared at him behind Lando’s back. No such thing as partnership and loyalty in this galaxy.

“Don’t think I won’t.” Lando winked at him and kept walking, steering the pallet along behind the K’triq. Han and Chewie fanned out to walk on either side of the shipment, guarding whatever precious or semi-precious cargo they had signed on for in this mess. It would really be helpful to know what it was, but the way all of this had been arranged meant he wouldn’t be able to read the data disk until he was back on the shuttle, and by then all of it would be on the shuttle, too, leaving him no way to back out.

Han missed a step, frowning. That actually had been _very_ well planned, if he hadn’t put it all together until just now. Who was paranoid and suspicious enough to go to these ridiculous lengths? What was going on here?

“How familiar are you with the contact at Blue… at the syndicate who pulled you into this?” he asked, directing his question off to his right toward Lando without turning his head from surveying the crowd.

“Like I said, I owed him a favor.” Lando shrugged, the shimmer of his outfit in the sun making the motion visible even from the corner of Han’s eye. “I’m a man who pays my debts.”

“No you’re not.” He grabbed Lando’s arm, pulling them both to a halt. “You’re a man who wiggles his way out of his debts if there’s the slimmest chance he can.”

Lando draws himself upright. “How dare you? You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

“You left me and Beckett stranded on Savareen without even hesitating!”

“You don’t know that I didn’t hesitate,” Lando snapped. “And besides, I didn’t owe either of you anything. Not by that point.”

Chewie called back to them from where his strides had carried him past the cart into the crowd. [We’re going to lose our guide if you two don’t hurry up.]

“You can’t find the way back to the ship without kir? What kind of partner are you?” Han started walking again, pushing Lando along for the first few strides until he got his feet under himself. 

“The offer’s open if you’re sick of him being rude, Chewbacca.” Lando stumbled and caught himself on the cartload of crates, brushing Han’s hand away. Han hadn’t even meant to offer it in the first place. Just a reflex, catching people when they fell. A reflex he needed to stomp out.

Their guide finally led them back to the docking field where their battered little shuttle sat, off by itself in a way that somehow made it look even more pathetic than it would have up close to the freighters and cruisers. Lando stumbled again, outrage crossing his face. 

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” Han asked, waving Chewie ahead to open the loading bay door.

“Where’s the Falcon?” Lando turned on him sharply, the crates and cart forgotten. “Did you lose my ship already?”

“Whose ship? I won the Falcon fair and square.”

“Where _is_ she?”

“She’s docked somewhere safe. We needed to fly incognito for a while.” Han looked over at Chewie, who had the door open and was gesturing at them impatiently. “Get moving, will you? We don’t have all day, here.”

“You docked her somewhere safe and just _left_ her.” Lando shook his head and shoved the cart hard. “That ship needs to be flying, Solo, not just sitting somewhere gathering dust. I never should’ve let you win that hand.”

“ _Let_ me? You didn’t let me do a damn thing, Lando, you were cheating and I turned the damn table on you. I ought to—”

“You’re welcome to _try_ to, you jumped-up son of a—”

Blaster fire cut across the docking yard and sent them both lunging for the ground. “What the hell?” Han shouted, rolling onto his side and looking over at the shuttle. Chewie had ducked back inside the landing bay, just the muzzle of his own blaster visible. Han rolled the other way and saw who had been doing the firing: a half-squad of stormtroopers at the far end of the field, now advancing at a trot.

“We’ve got company!” he blurted, firing wildly at them and lurching to his feet. 

“ _Obviously_.” Lando was hunched over, staggering, but shoving the cart toward the shuttle. “Any other brilliant observations?”

“Are you hit? What’s wrong?” Han couldn’t take his eyes off the stormtroopers long enough to look Lando over, not without losing his slim chance to keep up the covering fire. “Turn left, turn left, you’re drifting away from the ship!”

“Not hit,” Lando said through clenched teeth. “Landed on something when I fell, I think… broke a rib, I think, I can keep moving.”

“Good, because you’ve got to. Chewie! Help him get this thing in!” Han took a few last shots, then vaulted ahead of the cart and onto the ramp, running full-speed to the shuttle cockpit. They needed to be in the air by the time the loading by door closed, or ideally a few seconds sooner.

_How much of it was a trap?_ he wondered while he powered up the shuttle. All of it? The whole job? Or just the meeting? It didn’t seem likely that Lando was in on it—risking his own skin wasn’t his style—so the K’triq, then, maybe? Leading them on that winding path through the city to buy time?

It made as much sense as anything. Never in his life had he wanted a pair of snakeskin boots as much as he did now.

“How’s it going down there?” he shouted, powering up the thrusters. “We don’t have much time, you know!” The stormtroopers were dropping into firing positions close enough that they could do serious damage to the shuttle’s undercarriage. A few shots went toward them, which explained why Chewie hadn’t bothered to answer Han’s question, at least. “Lando! Get that cargo stowed so we can get out of here!”

“I’m working on it!” Muffled cursing, a few thuds. “Just go, just go, we’ll worry about strapping it all down once we make it out of here! It doesn’t matter if it’s secure if we’re all dead!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Han muttered, punching in the takeoff sequence to break them out of planetary gravity. “Chewie! Close the door!”

Less-muffled cursing this time, in Shyriiwook and really more like full-on howling. Han listened for the familiar groan and crash of the landing bay door hydraulics, his hand hovering over the lever to complete the launch sequence. No time, no time, _come on, Chewie_ …

The hydraulics and Chewie howled in unison, and Han slammed the lever all the way down. “C’mon,” baby,” he muttered to the shuttle as it shook its way into the sky. “C’mon. Don’t fall apart on me here, you can do it, you can do this…”

It could, just barely. Good enough.

They broke atmo and Han double-cycled the thrusters, trying to clear the traffic corridor to where he could maneuver freely. The stormtroopers were safely left behind, but where there were troopers, there were Imperial ships, and their little ragged shuttle wasn’t anywhere close to in the clear yet. _No time, no time, never any time…_

Planets like this didn’t get the most up-to-date fighters for their Imperial patrols, just old-model units with upgraded guns. The little shuttle Han was coaxing through its paces was a few years younger at best, and he silently hoped that would be enough of an edge as he dodged through the shipping traffic in search of enough clear space to make a jump.

Shots were crossing their stern, making the whole ship shudder with each impact. Han clenched his teeth and double-cycled the thrusters again, veering around a Calamari pleasure yacht—what possible reason could _that_ have to be _here_?—and dodging an impossibly tiny little cruiser that had to be some rich kid’s hot rod.

Curses and frustrated howls were still coming from the back of the shuttle. The patrol ships were gaining. Han needed a miracle and fast.

Some instinct sent his gaze flickering to an auxiliary monitor, not one that served any purpose in running for your life from Imperial patrols. It showed heat and radiation patterns in the area, presented as blocky patterns of dark and light. There was a bright spot off at the edge of the cluster of ships waiting to descend into K’triq space lanes, one with a distinct pattern that Han had seen before. A Daulooli tachyon mining vessel. They were predictable fixtures in the metaphorical landscape of any shipping lanes: parked off to the edge, not moving much, just vacuuming up the subatomic garbage of ships going in and out of hyperspace. 

Every once in a while they would decide they had enough tachyons, whatever that meant, and head back to Daulool, where nobody had any idea what they _did_ with them. Getting them moving again after years or decades spent in the same place was quite a production, though, and the heat pattern on the neglected monitor was much too stable for that. This ship wasn’t going anywhere; it was still collecting garbage. 

Han double-cycled the thrusters again and aimed right for the Daulooli ship. Their other characteristic, besides not moving much, was that they were big and awkward and all shaped the same. He could use that.

He sped at the ship, then threw the shuttle into an arc over it, sliding down the other side through the broad trough between the tachyon collection pods that he knew would be there, because it was _always_ there, on every Daulooli ship ever made. The pursuing patrol ships took looser arcs over the miner, not as certain of what the other side would look like. That, and the fact that Dauloolis always stayed off at the edge of things on their own, gave Han the room he needed to punch the shuttle into hyperspace and away.

**

He dropped them out again three systems away, a cluster of gas giants around a red dwarf star. Nothing lived there and even the Empire couldn’t scratch anything useful out of the planets, who had all swallowed their moons long ago. A good place to take stock of things.

“That was another impossible escape made possible by yours truly,” he called toward the cargo bay while he turned the ship down into assessment mode. “No need to all rush to say thank you.”

“You go to hell, Solo.”

“Always sweet talking me, Lando. You make me blush.”

Lando stormed into the cockpit, his cape hanging crooked across his shoulders. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking escape. Survival. You know, the basics.”

“My ship is back there! You kidnapped me!”

Han surged up out of his seat. “I kept you alive, you ungrateful gundark!”

Chewie pushed between them, crossing the cockpit to the co-pilot’s seat. He stared at the monitors and rumbled a question. [What happened to the aux backup generator?]

“It probably got hit by Imperial fire,” Han said sourly. “Like most of the aft end. Do we even still have deflectors?”

Chewie consulted another monitor. [No.]

“All right. Well. But we _are_ still alive, and I’m still not hearing any gratitude for that!”

“Any chance of this tub ever making hyperspace again?” Lando asked, pushing past Han to move to Chewie’s side. “Or are we stranded here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Still not hearing a thank you! How about just one, between the two of you?”

[We could make hyperspace,] Chewie said, tapping his paw against a readout. [But we’d never come out of it again. The stress of the jump would disintegrate the whole ship.]

“ _Damn_ it, Solo!” Lando collapsed into the pilot’s seat and threw his hands in the air. “What is the matter with you!”

“I saved our lives!” Han shouted. “Aren’t either of you listening to me at all? I did that!”

[You didn’t do it very _well_ ,] Chewie said. [But thank you anyway.]

Lando folded his arms across his chest and stared stonily out the viewscreen. One thank-you between the two of them after all.

“I’ll go see what I can do with the aux,” Han said, kicking at the bulkhead as he walked out. “The two of you can go to hell.”

**

The aux was well and truly fried. Han stared at the melted circuits and fused components for a long, contemplative time. After a while Chewie came and joined him in staring. 

“Any ideas?” Han said finally. Chewie shook his head and patted Han on the shoulder. 

[Lando was working on reading the data disk,] he said. [Let’s go see if he’s got it.]

“It doesn’t do us much good if we can’t _go_ anywhere, bud. Can’t deliver the goods if we can’t move.”

[We’ll figure that out next. Come on.]

Han followed him back to the bridge with a final, weary look at the open panel on the aux. As jobs went, this one was definitely turning out to be bottom-tier. Where was his luck when he needed it? 

Qi’ra’s face flashed through his mind, and he winced, pausing for a moment to steady himself on the bulkhead. He wasn’t going to let himself wander into that mess—he wasn’t going to dwell. Qi’ra wasn’t his luck anymore, she wasn’t his dream or his future, she wasn’t anything. She was a loss, that was all. A red mark in the ledger that he needed to outrun until he could balance it out with black.

“Han!” Lando called from the bridge. “Get up here, I think we’ve got something.”

The disk didn’t have a holomessage on it like Han was expecting; just data files that they pulled up on one of the shuttle’s monitors. Lando squinted at the text, which was written in Old Chandrilan instead of Standard. Who the hell was in charge of Blue Storm, and why were they so damn obscure about everything?

“Seems like the kind of thing you should check into before you accept the job,” Lando said drily when Han voiced that thought out loud. “Just an idea for the future. Okay, so these first few files are text instructions and star maps to point us toward the exchange point.”

“And the last few?”

“Encrypted.” Lando frowned and leaned in close to the screen. “I read Old Chandrilan at a basic level, I’m not an expert. There’s a paragraph here that’s about the encryption but I don’t really know what it means. You a language guy, Chewie?”

[More than you two, but not ones from Chandrila.] Chewie sat down in the pilot’s seat, shaking his head. [This run might be more trouble than it’s worth.]

“You’re just _now_ thinking so?” Han kicked at the floor; couldn’t risk kicking a bulkhead, his foot might go right through this piece of crap. “We need to know what the rest of the files say before we just go waltzing off to a meetup half-blind.”

“I’m no decryption expert.” Lando shook his head. “We’ll have to find someone who is.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Lando raised an eyebrow at him. “I imagine we go to a station, or a port, and hire or con someone.”

“Well, right, obviously, but the shuttle’s broken. We can’t go anywhere.”

Lando closed his eyes for a moment. “That’s the kind of thing you probably should have said up front, Han.”

“I was going to!”

“For the love of…” Lando drew in a deep breath. “What are we going to do now, then? We’re stranded in the middle of nowhere!”

“Chewie and I were talking about this back in the cargo bay.”

“And?”

“Well… we didn’t really come to an answer yet. But we were talking about it.”

Chewie sighed and reached for the comms panel. [I’ll put out a distress signal.]

“You can’t! What if an Imperial ship picks it up? They’ll arrest us on sight. We’re wanted.”

[We’re not near any Imperial shipping lanes. That’s why we jumped here in the first place.]

Han couldn’t think of a counter for that. How was Chewie so good at getting the best of him?

Lando cleared his throat. “We’re not near any shipping lanes at all, I don’t think. Forget the Empire, how is _anyone_ going to find us?”

“I guess we hope for some small-scale trader or a kid taking a personal shuttle for a joyride.” Han looked at the readout screen of the chip data again. “Hopefully one that’s big enough to hold the cargo. We have them take us somewhere in the direction of this meetup point, but not all the way there until we can get the rest of the disc decrypted. Does that cover the whole plan? Sound fair enough?”

“Unless Chewie has a better idea,” Lando said. They both turned and looked at Chewie expectantly, and got a stern look and a low bleat for it. “Then I guess that’s what we’re doing.”

“Good to have a plan, even if it’s not much of one.” Han clapped Chewie on the back. “Get that distress call going, buddy, and I’ll go double-check that we’re not leaking oxygen. Let’s hope somebody’s wandering around out here and has room to take us in.”

**

Han’s luck was always strong: good or bad, he almost never drifted through life in luck-neutral situations. He was always surrounded by shit that was either not his fault or that he had no right to expect. It kept life interesting, and sometimes horrifying, but at least he was never bored.

Right now he was cursing the fact that luck was such a damn game, because on the one hand, someone had picked up the distress call and signaled that they were on their way: good luck. On the other, their savior-to-be was an Imperial freighter, exactly what they had assured each other they would avoid out here.

“I knew it,” Lando said grimly. “Now what?”

“What do you mean, you knew it? We all agreed it wasn’t going to happen!” Han kicked at the pilot’s seat. “Chewie, you were particularly clear, I think, about how we jumped this way specifically to avoid Imperial traffic lanes, and so—”

[It’s not military.] Chewie tapped at the controls. [It’s a freight shuttle. A hauler. There won’t be any officers or even stormtroopers on board. Just a low-level pilot and crew hauling equipment or supplies.]

“They’ll still have an alert pop up on our ID, won’t they?” Han frowned. “I mean, we’re wanted.”

Lando looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You have a pretty high opinion of how important you are to the Empire, Solo. You’re not exactly a crime boss out here. One man and one Wookie with a shuttle on its last legs, that’s not exactly going to keep Lord Vader awake at night.”

“Sometimes it’s one man, one Wookie, and the Millennium Falcon. In case you forgot.”

Lando’s eyes narrowed even more. “What do you say that when we get to a port, you and me find another game of sabacc and—"

“No thanks, I’ll keep what I’ve got.” Han moved to Chewie’s side. “Signal back and thank them for the lift, I guess. We don’t have a lot of other options. Then come help me make the cargo look a little less suspicious.”

“How are you going to do that?” Lando asked. “You’ll void the whole deal if you take it out of its crates. They’ll say you tampered with it, and then they’ll shoot all three of us.”

“I thought you were a smuggler, Calrissian. I thought you had done this before.”

“I was better at it than you, Solo. I didn’t get myself into a mess like this.”

Han took a deep breath and let it go through clenched teeth. “I’m going to go put the crates in bigger crates. With different labeling on them. That okay with you?”

“Wow, bigger crates and different labels. The Empire will never see through that. You should be Vader’s right-hand man, Solo, you’re a step ahead of everybody.”

Han’s hands curled into fists, but he felt Chewie’s paw brush against his wrist and forced himself to keep still. This wasn’t the time or place for a fight. Too much going on.

But when they got on some solid footing subsidized by someone else, as long as they weren’t in Imperial or Blue Storm custody…

He was going to knock Lando’s teeth right down his throat.

**

The freighter that came to their rescue was an enormous relief. It was so beat-up and antiquated that it probably hadn’t seen a full Imperial inspection since Han was a toddler, and no Stormtrooper with any self-respect would set foot on it for anything less than Bail Organa himself, forget two-bit smugglers.

It was understaffed, too, with just one pilot and an ancient R2 unit running the whole show. The R2 was a nonentity, barely making a sound or flickering a light in response to anything, and Han started ignoring it almost immediately. The pilot, though. 

The pilot was worthy of attention.

He met them in the cargo bay of the freighter once the shuttle was tucked away inside and the pressure was equalized, offering his hand and a serious tilt of his head as they disembarked. “Bodhi Rook,” he introduced himself. “Imperial Freight Corps. I’m sorry it took me longer than expected to get here.”

“Han Solo. This is Chewbacca. No problem at all, we’re just glad you got our message.”

“Yes, of course.” Rook had huge, utterly serious eyes. Hard to look away from. “It’s the duty of any pilot to help fellow travelers in need.”

Lando stepped around Han and Chewie, smiling grandly. “If only everyone felt the same.” He took Rook’s hand and bowed over it. “Lando Calrissian, at your service.”

Rook got a bit wild-eyed. “Surely not. I’m at your service, sir. As a member of the Imperial Freight Corps I serve all citizens of the Empire and—”

“You are a credit to your position.” Lando smiled at him, still holding his hand. “Please, tell me how you came to be out here. And flying solo, too! No copilot? No crew?”

“Oh, well.” Rook looked around the cargo bay. “I’m on my way back from a delivery, actually. That’s why there’s room for your shuttle. Otherwise I would have had to rescue you three but abandon the ship.”

“We’re very fortunate you didn’t have to,” Han said, stepping up to Lando’s side and trying to muscle Lando back even an inch. “Where are you heading?”

“Oh… just an Imperial parts depot. Picking up my next delivery shipment.” Rook frowned slightly. “I’m not supposed to talk about it, actually.”

“Of course!” Lando said. “Of course. Well. Please, show us where we can freshen ourselves up and keep out of your way. I’m sure you have a great deal to do.”

Rook shrugged. “Not at this point. It’s just going back to point A from point B. The R2 unit steers the ship. I won’t have anything to do until I sign for the next shipment.”

Lando smiled. “Well, then we’ll all have time to get to know each other! How wonderful. Don’t you think so, Han?”

Han was pretty sure it would be less getting to know each other and more protecting Rook from being eaten alive by Lando. “Absolutely. What a piece of luck.”

Chewie turned and unceremoniously stomped back inside the shuttle. Han didn’t need his opinion of this put into words; it didn’t really translate well, anyway. The closest he’d ever gotten was _hairless and stupid_ , but that didn’t capture the flavor of the original Shyriiwook at all.

**

Neither Han nor Chewie liked admitting defeat much, in any situation, but in the end there wasn’t anything else they could do. The shuttle was beyond repair.

“At least we’ll get some money out of scrapping it,” Han said, scratching at his hair and scowling at the panels they had pulled apart in their efforts. “Not enough to cover the cost of buying something else to get us back to the Falcon, but…”

Chewie groaned, wordless and mournful, and started cleaning up the various bits of wire and circuit they had pulled out of the panels. Han stacked the pieces of paneling themselves into lopsided towers, then walked over to study the cargo. 

They still had to get it to that location given on the encrypted disk. They also still had to decrypt the rest of the disk, and he wasn’t sure how they were going to pull that off without asking the Imperial pilot for help and the use of either his ship or his droid. Han was going out of his way to think of the guy as _the Imperial pilot_ instead of _Rook_ for the sole purpose of reminding himself why it would be a very bad idea to ask for either of those things. It would get them all arrested and either thrown into the mines on one of the particularly unpleasant moons, or just executed on the spot.

The Empire didn’t like smugglers. Han pretended not to know why; they were a charming group, on the whole. Fun to have around. Good at parties.

He was stalling on making any of the number of decisions in front of him, and he wasn’t even doing a good job of it. Chewie was going to be extremely disappointed in him.

“I guess I better go talk to Rook,” he said, turning toward Chewie. “Ask him if he’ll drop us off at a station on the way to the delivery point, so we can get the rest of the disk decrypted and buy another ship.”

Sometimes Wookies didn’t need words at all, just extremely skeptical looks with a little bit of a fur-flip included.

“Win a ship,” Han amended, dragging a hand through his own hair. “Steal a ship. You’re right. We’re in no position to _buy_ a ship. What was I thinking.”

Chewie muttered something rude that Han couldn’t quite make out. 

“I guess I’ll let Lando know what the plan is, first. Since we seem to all be in this together.” He waited for a response, but flat-out ignoring people was another key silent part of Shyriiwook, and one that Chewie wielded well. Han made a rude Corellian gesture at his back and headed for the living quarters.

Calling them that was a stretch, really; it was two rooms with four bunks apiece, and a tiny kitchen attached to a sitting area that featured one table, three uncomfortable chairs, and a half-sized couch. The Imperial budget was not going to creature comforts for their freighter fleet, that was for sure. 

Han cut through the bunks to find Lando and Rook sitting at the table, heads bent over a tablet. Lando’s hand was resting extremely comfortably on Rook’s shoulder, a position that Han eyed dubiously for a long moment before clearing his throat and rapping his knuckles on the bulkhead. “Hate to interrupt. But I need to interrupt.”

Rook scrambled out of his chair, clearing his throat loudly. “Oh! Hello, yes. Of course. How can I help you? How is your ship? Can I assist with repairs at all?”

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people, Han.” Lando gave him a stern look, like he had any kind of moral high ground here, in any way, shape, or form. “It’s rude. You might startle somebody.”

Han stared at him just long enough to be clear that he’d heard him, then turned his attention to Rook. “I appreciate the offer, but the shuttle’s beyond repair. We’re going to have to sell it for scrap, once we find somewhere with a scrap buyer.”

Rook nodded quickly, scratching at the base of his carefully tied hair tail. “Any station or habitable moon out here will have a scrap buyer. I assume you want to steer clear of planets.”

Han blinked, taking a physical effort to keep from glancing at Lando. “What makes you assume that?”

Rook frowned, and did glance back and forth between Han and Lando. “Well, everything about you shouts fairly loudly that you want to stay off the grid. Unmonitored. Harder to do that planetside than anywhere else. Did I midjudge? Is that not the case?”

Han sighed through clenched teeth and looked at Lando. “I thought you were good at this. You’re always talking about how you’re good at this.”

“Me? How do you know you aren’t the one who gave it away? You, I can tell you with great confidence, are _not_ good at this.”

“It was both of you,” Rook said quietly. “For the record.”

Han gave himself a second to enjoy Lando’s offended look. “What about the Wookie? Was he as open to read as the two of us.”

Rook shrugged. “I’m not as familiar with Wookie body language. Or other non-verbal tells, since I presume fur is involved moreso than with humans. Claws, maybe. Teeth?”

“They will sometimes chitter their teeth when stressed,” Lando said. “Mostly only younger ones, though, they get past that as they grow up. Impressive observation. I’d like to talk to you more, at some point, about your talents of observation, Mr. Rook.”

“Leave the kid alone, Lando.”

“He’s not a kid, and mind your own business, Solo.” 

They glared at each other across the room for a moment, until Rook loudly cleared his throat again. “What, ah, what _did_ you come to ask about, Mr. Solo? How can I help you?”

“Right. Well.” Han dragged his hand through his hair. “To be honest, buddy, we have a whole series of problems. I don’t know how many of them you can help us with, if any, but maybe we can sit down, go through ‘em one by one, and figure something out.”

Rook blinked. “Bodhi.”

Han blinked back. “What?”

“My name is Bodhi, not Buddy? What you said just now?”

“No, I was saying buddy as in a general, casual… greeting of… like, casual friends? Buddies?” Han exhaled again and turned his gaze up to the ceiling. “Maybe we should start over at the beginning.”

“Let’s not waste time.” Lando was tapping at the tablet again, pulling up a system chart that Han recognized as the halfway point designated in the portion of the message they had decoded already. “Bodhi, can you get us here?”

Rook moved back to his side and looked down at the tablet in silence for a moment. Han noted smugly that Rook’s hand wasn’t _quite_ touching Lando’s shoulder, not this time. Good. He’d get some common sense into the kid and keep Lando off his tail for the rest of this run. Lando deserved it. And the kid _didn’t_ deserve Lando, based on what Han had seen so far.

“Yes,” Rook said after a moment. “It’s a bit out of my way, though. I can’t divert any farther than that without raising attention. I hope you understand.”

“Absolutely.” Lando smiled up at him, the big smile where he turned the full force of his warmth and attention on his target. It made Han’s stomach feel tight and strange all the way across the room. Damn Lando anyway. “Believe me, we know that even this help is more than generous on your part. Picking us up at all was more than generous. Words can’t express our gratitude.”

Rook shook his head, but a smile was tugging at his lips. “It’s always only right to assist travelers in need, as I said. I’m happy to help you.”

“Such a gentleman. A rare thing in this sad age.” Lando looked at his tablet again, tapping at a few keys. “Are there any stations or moon bases with scrap buyers between here and there? Anywhere we could get that shuttle unloaded for a few coins?”

“That’s none of your business, Lando,” Han reminded him. “The shuttle is mine and Chewie’s, in a fifty-fifty split. Zero percent Calrissian.”

Lando gave him a ridiculously wide-eyed impression of being hurt. “I’m trying to help you and the Wook out, Han. You’re going to need to finance the next leg of the journey, after all, and the scrap value is all you’ll have to do that. I’m afraid I’m in no position to float you a loan right now, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be inclined to, our past business being what it was. You understand.”

“What if I put your smug face through that bulkhead, Lando, our past business being what it was? You understand?”

“Excuse me,” Rook said, holding one hand up as if waiting to be called out by a squad leader in infantry training. 

“Yes?” Lando said, trying to shift from pissed to solicitous and getting suck somewhere in the middle. If Han had a holocamera, he would use it right then.

“Are the two of you… partners?” Rook asked uncertainly. “Romantic partners? Is that the trouble between you?”

“Absolutely not.” Lando’s voice was positively icy now. “I would sooner kiss the Wookie.”

A low wail of offense came from the hallway, with Chewie following it into the room a moment later. He looked around at the three of them. [I prefer my mates taller. And have any of you accomplished anything, or have you only been bickering up here?]

“Rook will give us a lift to the rendezvous point,” Han said. “Or at least the current rendezvous point. When we get there, we’ll sort out the rest of it and figure out next steps.” He could see Rook’s brow furrowing and took that as a sign that he’d been just cryptic enough. No point putting _all_ their cards on the table.

Lando had to ruin everything, of course. For a good card player, he was a shitty card player when the cards were metaphorical and he couldn’t cheat. “Why not use the resources we’ve got at hand to decode the rest of it here?”

“Because, Lando,” Han said through clenched teeth, “I don’t think we want that data running through Imperial circuits, do you?”

Lando refused to be cowed, as usual. “I think we’re past the point where we have to worry about that kind of problem, Han.”

“How? How are we past that point? Are we past the point where we can get shot? Or thrown into an Imperial prison to rot? Are we past the point where smuggling is a _crime_ , Lando?”

Rook cleared his throat awkwardly and Han froze, his last words echoing in his mind. _Shit_.

“I’m sure you mean metaphorical smuggling,” Rook said. “Smuggling your laundry back and forth, or some such. Yes?”

Lando nodded, his brow furrowed seriously. “Yes, exactly. Thank you, Bodhi.”

“Wonderful. Perfectly reasonable.” Rook glanced at Han, then at Chewie, and visibly reconsidered pressing for any further agreement. “Now, perhaps I didn’t hear correctly, and if that’s the case, do just tell me, but it seemed you said something about decoding data.”

There was a length silence, where Han stared at Lando and silently demanded that he dig them out of this mess, and Lando gazed at the ceiling and ignored him.

“Perhaps,” Lando said finally. “But perhaps not. There is data, which is currently encoded. But it’s not urgent. It can wait. We wouldn’t want to ask you to do anything… untoward.”

“I think perhaps your friend Mr. Solo had a point about being well past the point of worrying about untowardness.”

“You have it backwards,” Han said, allowing himself a split second to enjoy the sight of Lando being visibly thrown by the object of his flirtations actually jousting back. “I was the one saying we’re _not_ past the point of no return. Lando thinks we are, and we might as well throw caution to the wind and just run wild across the galaxy.”

“I’ve never been very good at throwing caution to the wind.” Rook smiled slightly, then looked up as an alert tone chimed from the cockpit. “Ah. My attention is needed. No need for you to make a decision right now, anyway; we have a few days of travel ahead of us at the very least. Please, be comfortable and at home. Excuse me.”

Han waited until the sound of Rook’s footsteps had faded away before he dropped into the chair across from Lando. “What, exactly, are you doing with that kid?”

“I’m not doing anything.” Lando produced a deck of cards from somewhere in his jacket and ruffled through them. 

“You’re flirting.”

“I’m not flirting.” Lando cut the deck and pointed half of it at Han. “I’m carrying on a conversation. It’s not my fault if my conversations are irresistible.”

Han had to laugh. “Leave the kid alone, all right? He’s practically a toddler. He doesn’t need your kind of trouble.”

“He’s your age if not older, Solo.” He placed the cut deck back together and shuffled it again. “Drop the wise old man act, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I’ve always been old for my age.” Han swung his boots up onto the tabletop and looked upside-down at Chewie. “What do you think? About the decoding thing, not how old I am.”

[We shouldn’t do it on the ship if we can avoid it.] Chewie leaned against the bulkhead and folded his arms across his chest. [And all three of you are absurdly young.]

“Don’t you start.” Han reached over and took the deck from Lando. “We’re agreed, then? No decoding until we’re off this ship?”

Lando sighed. “Have it your way. Did you take my cards with the intention of playing a hand, or just for dramatic effect?”

Han waggled the deck at him. “None of us have any stakes, so we can play for future considerations.”

“I thought you were going to suggest shaving Chewie here and playing for tufts of hair.” Lando winced at Chewie’s answering growl. “Future considerations are fine, though.”

“Perfect. Chewie, you gonna play or supervise?”

[I know better than to let either of you win my future.] Chewie shook his head and settled in to watch. [I’ll keep you honest.]

Lando snorted and gestured for Han to deal. “Oh, Chewbacca. Better men, Wookies, and droids than you have tried.”

**

Most people who spent their time on spaceships tended to synch their ship’s night to the Imperial settings. It was just easier that way. Han had kept the Falcon set on that cycle, and the shuttle, too, so he couldn’t blame his insomnia on a change in clocks. He just couldn’t sleep, plain and simple.

He punched the pillow a few times and gave up, slipping out of the bunks to make his way to the cockpit. Not his ship, but looking at the stars and checking the instruments was a soothing ritual. Reminding himself of his place in the big slow turning of the galaxy, even if that place was a mumbo-jumbo set of coordinates and a starfield he didn’t recognize.

He studied the view through the screen for a moment, then turned to look at the readout panels, absently reaching to tap one and advance it through the data set.

“Don’t touch that, please.”

Han jumped, nearly cracking his head on the overhead monitors. “For the love of… Rook, what are you _doing_?”

Rook shrugged from his place in the jump seat, tucked back in the corner of the cockpit. “Just keeping an eye on things.”

“What is there to keep an eye on? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Well, for example, one of the somewhat disreputable traveler refugees I took in might slip take an opportunity to slip into the cockpit unsupervised and mess about with my settings.” Rook raised an eyebrow. “Unlikely, but possible.”

“I wasn’t messing with anything.” Han shoved his hands into his pockets. “Just looking at the readouts.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re going to stay awake the whole time we’re on the ship? That’s not going to work out well for you.”

Rook sighed softly and stretched his legs out, nudging the toe of his boot against Han’s ankle in the cramped space. “Actually I just found that I couldn’t sleep. But here you are, acting strange, so perhaps it was intended that we’d keep each other company.”

“Intended by who?”

Another shrug. “Who knows? The Force, perhaps.”

“The…” Han laughed and shook his head. “Don’t tell me you believe in that crap.”

“I’m from Jedha.” A simple statement, but carrying so much under its surface. Han had to fight an impulse to step back from the man. “Not believing in the Force would mean not believing in myself.”

“Jedha.” Han turned to look at the viewscreen again, taking a beat to collect his thoughts. “What brought you all the way out here?”

“The same thing that brings most people, I suppose.” Rook sounded almost amused. “A general need to eat food and live under shelter. My mother and aunts needing the same. The Empire unifying the Jedhan economy to the point where the only way to earn money for food and shelter was to go off-planet. The Empire being an equally unified pan-galactic employer. So.”

“Kinda similar to what got me off Corellia. I mean, except for the details.”

Rook laughed. “The details are indeed the tricky part.”

“So you’re not a committed Imperial, Rook? Not dedicated in your heart to the glorious plan for the galaxy?”

Rook fell quiet, and Han glanced back at him again, struck by how large and luminous his eyes were in the dark.

“Take care with how you talk here, Mr. Solo,” Rook said softly. “I doubt that the ship is listening, but you never know.”

“Right.” Han blew out a breath. “After I made a fuss about that exact thing earlier, too. You must think I’m an idiot.”

“I don’t think any of you are idiots.” Rook frowned, leaning forward in his seat. “But I think you don’t know as much as you think you know. Any of you. You’re very cynical, and very bold, but that’s not the same thing as wise.”

“I should’ve been able to guess you’re from Jedha,” Han said. “You talk like a Jedi knight in an old story.”

“A knight? No.” Rook shook his head and settled back in his seat again. “I talk like the monks.”

“What’s the difference?”

Rook laughed. “Oh, that would take all day to explain. Whole books have been written.”

“Never mind, then. I don’t have that kind of time.”

“Why not? You’re not sleeping.”

“I’m going to give it another try.” Han tapped his fist against the bulkhead and turned to go. “Goodnight, Rook.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Solo.”

“You can call me Han, you know.”

“And you can call me Bodhi.”

“What does Lando call you?” Han winced, catching himself even as the words came out of his mouth. “Never mind. Forget I said that. It’s none of my business.”

Rook looked at him steadily, thoughtfully. “You don’t approve?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“He’s your partner, though. In this business of yours.”

“Not my _partner_. No. We stumbled across each other accidentally. He’s got no part in this. No share of the take at all.”

Rook’s brow furrowed a bit. “He disagrees on that point.”

“Typical Lando.” Han shook his head. “I’ll have Chewie disabuse him of that idea.”

“I don’t mean to cause trouble.”

“You’re not. You’re fine.” Han sighed. “It’s just Lando being Lando.”

“Is he not trustworthy?”

Oh, this _kid_. Han stared at the viewscreen again for a moment, trying to think of any possible answer to that question. It wasn’t even a matter of truth or untruth, just trying to find any answer at all that could coexist in the same reality as Lando.

“He’s a decent guy,” Han said finally. Deep down, somewhere under all the card sharking and self-preservation. There was probably a solid amount of decency there. At the very least, he wouldn’t deliberately hurt the kid. When they got wherever they were going, Lando would let Rook down easy. Han at least felt certain of that.

Rook smiled weakly and settled back in the jump seat. “Good to know. Thank you.”

“No problem.” He tapped on the bulkhead again. “Goodnight, I guess.”

This time he actually walked away, making his way back to the bunks. He lay down and pulled the threadbare ship’s blanket around himself, burying his face in his jacket in its role as pillow. They were a hell of a long way out in the middle of nowhere. Usually he didn’t think about that, but sometimes, when there was a shortage of things that made _sense_ to focus on, it crept up into the front of his mind.

He didn’t sleep much the rest of ship’s night.

**

He and Chewie spent most of the next day breaking down the shuttle into its component parts, figuring out what should be refurbished before they sold it and what could go as-is for scrap. The nav computer, for one thing, would bring them some decent credits if they did a memory wipe and updated it to the latest navware. They got that process started and then sat around unbolting pieces of hull from each other and separating them into plates that could be sold as complete and plates with terrifying scorch marks and holes across them.

“What do you think of this guy?” Han asked, wincing as a piece of hull cracked into pieces in his hands. “Rook, I mean. What’s your read on him?”

[He seems good. Too good for the Empire.]

“Well, like he said. Everybody’s gotta make a living.” He tossed the charred pieces into the bin they’d marked for unsalvageable things. “And we are not gonna make much of one off what’s left of this shuttle.”

[The nav computer is worth something. And all of the displays are intact. There are always salvagers looking for displays.] Chewie cut a clean plate of hull free and gave a low trill of satisfaction. [You worry too much.]

“I worry exactly the right amount for the lifestyle we live.”

[You chose it.]

“There weren’t a lot of other options.” Chewie gave him a look that said he wasn’t buying the gundark shit Han was selling. Typical. “Not a lot of other options I was interested in, anyway.”

[Like I said. You chose it.] Chewie walked around to the other side of the shuttle, and Han subsided into sorting the salvageable pieces into a spectrum of quality. Chewie was right, as usual. He had chosen this life with his eyes wide open and his head completely empty, begging and chasing and demanding until Beckett and Val took him along. He saw what it was going to lead to—ugly, lonely death, and bullets in the back from people he thought he trusted. Nothing had been hidden under a shiny surface. There was no gilding here.

And yet here he was. He didn’t run home, or try to find himself a new home, or decide to see if he could get the Empire to take him back. He didn’t give up and choose a prison cell with three meals a day and hard labor to pay back the parts of what he’d stolen that the Empire considered worth it. He was still out here. Still choosing. Still a small-time smuggler and thief.

Still didn’t _want_ to do anything else.

He shook his head sharply and stood up, grabbing a toolkit and heading into the shuttle cockpit to disconnect those displays. Chewie was right about that, too. They’d probably get the best price out of anything left of the ship, after the computer. He needed to focus on that, and the credits they’d bring in, not get all mopey and stuck in his head worrying about his place in the universe. 

_Keep your head down and stay a nobody_ , he thought. _Don’t ever wander into anything important. That’s for other people, different people. Not me._

**

All of his good intentions got shot to shit by the next ship’s night, and as usual it was all Lando’s fault.

Chewie had set the disconnected nav computer up in the mess to run the updates it needed. It sat on the table, wired to a battery that Rook had produced from a storage space. It was buzzing and humming to itself, doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and Chewie turned his back for two minutes to help Han reach a tin of tofa beans on the top shelf, and when they both looked up again Lando was over there, popping the holodisk into the damn thing.

“What are you doing?” Han asked, fingers twitching to throw the beans at Lando’s head. “We agreed to leave that alone until we get off the ship.”

“Because you didn’t want to plug it into an Imperial computer.” Lando nodded at the nav system, which was now whirring thoughtfully as it scanned through the disk. “This isn’t hooked up to the ship. It’s got enough power to run some decryption, and with the upgrade Chewie did, it might even be able to _do_ it. Why not just get this done?”

“We agreed not to!”

“I’m altering the agreement.” Lando tapped at the stripped-down input pad that was the best the nav computer had in its disconnected state. “Chewie, give me a command probe, otherwise this’ll take all day.”

Chewie muttered but produce done from his tool pouch and handed it over, shrugging a little at Han. [We’re in this far, why not?] 

Han couldn’t really think of an objection at this point, except that this wasn’t how he’d planned to do it, and there was still the chance that Rook could see or hear something and decide to betray them after all. If he was going to do that he probably would have by now, but still, this was unnecessary risk. Their necks on the line when there was no reason for it…

“Ha! There we go,” Lando said as the display began rapidly scrolling through information. “Got some clean data. Coordinates, landing codes, instructions… oh, and some details about the damn cargo.”

Han frowned. “What about the cargo?”

“We’re exchanging this stuff at the halfway point. Flipping it for…” Lando trailed off, blinking at the screen. “Well. That can’t be right. Must not be done decoding.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s nonsense. There must be a later part of the code that pops it out as something else.”

“What does it _say_ , Lando?”

Lando rubbed the back of his neck, still staring at the screen. Han still hadn’t known the man for very long, but that was a strong enough tell that anyone could spot it. “Don’t shoot the messenger, all right?”

“ _Lando_ —”

“It says we’re flipping those crates for Corellian hounds.”

Han didn’t forget to breathe, exactly, it was more like everything just stopped for a moment. His thoughts, his breath, the beating of his heart, his very consciousness, his connection to the Force, not that such a thing existed—it all just _stopped_. It gave him a minute to hide from what Lando said, to let it wash past him and miss him entirely, and he would have been grateful for that minute, if he still existed.

Then he snapped back to himself and everything started again, but worse.

Chewie made a low, alarmed sound. [Are you sure?]

“That’s what it says.” Lando gestured at the screen. “I can run it again if you want, but I don’t think anything else is going to come up. We’re not that lucky.”

[Run it again anyway.] Chewie looked at Han and gave a soft, questioning trill. [Are you all right?]

“I’m fine.” Han realized his hands had tightened on the edge of the table, gripping it like he was holding on for dear life, and forced himself to let go. He curled his fingers against his palms and shoved them into his trouser pockets. “Run the decryption again, yeah. I’m sure it’s an error.”

“I really don’t think it’s an error.” Lando was looking at the computer, not at him, and for the first time Han could think of, he felt grateful to the man. He could trust Chewie to give him space, to not push on this too hard, but Lando—well, nobody could ever be sure with Lando. But apparently Lando wasn’t going to use this to his advantage right now, and that was more than Han had hoped for.

“What’s going on?”

Han started as Rook came into the mess. The Imperial looked puzzled, clearly reading the tension in the room but not having the slightest idea where it was coming from. He saw the nav computer setup and frowned, stepping toward it and resting his hand lightly on Lando’s back. “What’s this, what are you—”

Lando straightened and smiled at him, and Han turned away, making his way to the cabinet of premade meals and selecting one at random. He added water and watched the dry base hiss and expand, only letting himself catch Lando’s words in bits and pieces. “Nav computer… salvage… double-checking… code, and we don’t…”

“Ah, well, there you go,” Rook said, his voice light and gentle, if still puzzled. “There’s your answer, they want you to bring the cargo and exchange it for Corellian hounds.” He stopped. “That’s a bit odd, isn’t it? Is that what it said before? Trading solid-state goods for companion beasts, out here in the middle of nowhere? Are these hounds rare, or do they produce a special fur or something? I’ve never heard of them.”

Chewie made a distressed sound, and Han pushed his meal away hard enough that it skittered across the counter and fell to the floor. Bits of digestible meal flew everywhere. A total loss.

“Ah,” Rook said faintly. “Is there something I’m failing to understand?”

“Corellian hounds aren’t beasts,” Lando said after a long, dragged-out pause that Han refused to fill. These people could all walk themselves out an airlock. He wasn’t obligated to help them. “It’s sort of a code phrase.”

Or maybe he was, because they were useless and stupid. “It’s just a slang term, Lando. Don’t make it more complicated than it is.”

“Well, they’re using it as a code phrase for transmissions like this, because the reality would ping any tracers out there.” Lando tapped in some more input, watching the data scroll down the screen. “I’m still not seeing a number here, even on the second decode. Could be two, could be a hundred.”

“Nobody would ever move them in lots of a hundred. They couldn’t be controlled.”

Lando shook his head. “There’s drugs, there’s restraints, you could seal ‘em up in carbonite, even, if you were really dedicated.”

“If you wanted a seventy percent loss rate, you could! And drugs and heavy restraints, either one of those put your loss rate up at least ten percent, minimum. Things happen. They get hurt. They’re pretty damn delicate, even considering where they come from and what they’ve already been through!”

“I’m sorry,” Rook said hesitantly. “I don’t mean to interrupt. But you said they aren’t beasts?”

Lando shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the screen. “No.”

“Then—what are they? Code, or slang, or whatever—what is it for?”

Han forced himself to take a deep breath. It came back out as a laugh, harsh and painful in his chest, but who cared? What the hell did it matter? It didn’t. “Slaves, Rook. Corellian child slaves are called hounds. Street kids, nobody misses them. You round them up, get them off-world, and sell them for whatever anybody wants them for. A solid source of credits for the crime gangs of my home planet, or at least the ones who have access to the right bribes to move people off-world without a manifest inspection. So only the big guys, really. The ones you don’t want to get pissed off at you.”

“Child slavery.” Rook stared back and forth between them. “You—you’re traffickers in child slavery.”

“No!” Lando smacked his hand down on the nav computer casing. “We didn’t know that’s what this was. We just found out now, when we decoded the damn data. There was no way we could’ve known before.”

Rook’s eyes bored into Han’s face, searching for confirmation. Han was able to meet his gaze steadily, despite feeling like he wanted to collapse and be sick. They _hadn’t_ known about the kids. Maybe they should have, maybe they should’ve been smart enough to be able to put the pieces together and realize that the kind of people they’d all fallen in with weren’t known for even the most basic of scruples—

But they hadn’t. They didn’t know. 

“We never would’ve signed on if we’d known,” he said, his voice holding steady as well. “This is a classic damn syndicate switch.”

Some of the tension eased in Rook’s body, and he nodded, settling more firmly on his feet. “Well. Now that we know, what are we going to do?”

Lando glanced at Han and shook his head. “There’s no we, Bodhi. You’re not part of this.”

“You’re on my ship,” Rook said. “Technically I should report you all just for having overheard this conversation. I won’t, obviously, and that makes me part of the conspiracy. We’re a we, now.”

Han laughed, a sharp and raw sound that hurt on its way out, and kicked the bulkhead as hard as he could. “Please tell me this kid is joking, Lando. We don’t have time for idealists here.”

“I am not joking.” Rook folded his arms across his chest. “I’m either part of this, or you’re all under arrest on my authority as a representative of the Empire.”

Han took a step toward him. “I’d like to see you try to hold us, kid.”

To his credit, Rook stood his ground. “I remind you that I am armed, and have all the security codes for lockdown on this ship.”

“And Chewie can tear your arms off without breaking a sweat.”

Unease flickered across the kid’s face, finally, but before Han could press his advantage, Lando got in the middle again.

“Let’s just figure out what we’re going to do instead of wasting time fighting about who’s in and who’s out.” He rubbed the back of his head, looking around the room. “What are our options?”

[Jettison the cargo and run,] Chewie said.

Lando pointed at him. “I like that one.”

“Then we’re on another syndicate’s shoot on sight list.” Han shook his head. “The list of people who want to kill us is getting longer than I’d like.”

“We go to the meetup and have an Imperial squad backing us up to arrest the criminals,” Rook said.

This kid. Han opened his mouth, but Lando beat him to it. “By the Empire’s standards, Han and Chewie and I are also criminals, Bodhi. So that option’s not great for us.”

“Not just by the Empire’s _standards_ ,” Han said. “We’re actually, genuinely criminals. We do criminal things.”

“We can debate the ethics of what it means to break unjust laws at another time,” Lando said breezily. “What are our other options?”

There was silence for a moment. “Well,” Han said finally. “The most obvious is to deliver the cargo, then say we never agreed to trafficking kids, so we won’t be carrying out the second half.”

Lando looked skeptical. “You think they’ll let us get away with that?” 

“Obviously we don’t phrase it like morality. Our ship’s not set up to transport human cargo. We don’t have supplies for extra mouths. We have another job we have to get to, for someone even bigger and scarier than Blue Storm.”

“Maybe.” Lando scratched at his hair and thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think maybe we can swing it, but it’s going to take some fast talking and maybe letting them cut ten percent off our take.”

“I’ll sacrifice ten percent if it gets us out with our skins intact. I won’t _like_ it, but I’d rather be alive than rich.”

“Good, because you’re never gonna be rich, Solo.”

“You know what, Lando, why don’t you—” Han cut off, noticing the way Rook was staring at them. “What?”

The kid looked stone-cold horrified. “You can’t be serious.”

Lando frowned. “About which part?”

“You can’t really intend to just leave children in slavery to save yourself some inconvenience.”

“Not inconvenience,” Han said. “Death. Torture. Being fed to something large and unpleasant that feeds very slowly.”

“Children,” Rook said flatly. “They are children.”

“We can’t rescue them, Bodhi,” Lando said, in a more gentle tone than Han had ever heard from him. “Think about it. We don’t have any information at all about—anything! We don’t know where they’re being held, who’s holding them, if they’re drugged, if—we don’t even now how many there _are_. We can’t just go storming in without a plan.”

“Of course not,” Rook said, still staring at him like he’d never seen him before, or worse, like he was staring at something made of the most raw cruelty and debasement in the universe. “We give them their cargo. We perform exactly the role we’re expected to. We load the children on this ship. And then we take them to _safety_ instead of _slavery_.”

“And then the syndicate hunts us down for breaking our contract, and we’re back to the death and torture and being fed to something slowly,” Han said.

Rook shook his head. “I have great confidence in your mutual ability to wiggle free and emerge unscathed. I have the Empire’s insignia on my chest for security. And these children—children from your very home world, Corellian children—will be free.”

They stood in silence again, Han scraping through the hollows of his mind for an argument, Lando looking like he’d been struck in the stomach. Chewie moaned unhappily, the first sound he’d made in quite a while, and they all turned to look at him.

[I’m with him.] Chewie put a paw on Rook’s shoulder, towering over the man. [There are things that can’t be allowed.]

“You’re going to end up a rug on a mob boss’ floor,” Han said, his jaw almost too stiff to manage the words. “While you’re still alive and bleeding.”

[Maybe. But at least I’ll know I tried.]

“You’re both cowards,” Rook said quietly. “I’m ashamed to know you.”

“You _don’t_ know us,” Han snapped. “You know nothing. We’ve been on your ship for a few days, that’s it, that’s _all_.” Rook’s eyes went to Lando, and Han laughed out loud. “Trust me, fucking him doesn’t mean you _know_ him.”

“Enough.” Lando’s voice was something Han had never heard from him. Exhausted, empty, but with a resolve he hadn’t known Lando could muster. “I’m with them, too, Han. Rook is right. We have to at least try, or we’re cowards who don’t deserve the life we hold on to.”

Han nodded slowly. “I don’t appreciate being called a coward by a man who cut and ran and left me facing gunfire,” he said. “Or a man who works hauling freight for the Empire because earning a living on his own might require him to break a sweat or get his hands dirty. You both think pretty highly of yourselves, I guess, and maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not going to forget this, just so you know. But I’m not a mindless syndicate goon, and I’m not a kid-slaving monster, either. I’ll get those kids out myself if you two want to go buy a round of drinks and pat each other on the back for your morals. Don’t you ever fucking think you’re better than me. Either one of you.”

The silence echoed for a long time after he left the mess and went back to the bunks. He lay facedown, pressing his face into the pillow, willing his heart to slow down and his stomach to stop churning. He was never supposed to feel like this again, especially not now, when he was his own person with his own ship, who made his own rules and decided for himself who he would be beholden to. Someone might shoot him out of the sky, but he was never going to be _helpless_ again, he was never going to feel like this, like Corellian street trash worth less than a damn dog—

_Stop_ , he ordered himself, curling his hands into fists and pressing them against his closed eyelids. He saw stars until they faded into one great false-light blur, shot through with red. _You’re not a kid. You’re looking after yourself. They think they made you, but they didn’t. You chose. You decided, not them. You can do this. You will do this. And then you’ll get away from them and be free again._

He took slower breaths, steadier, and waited for his pulse to even out in turn. He would do this—because he wanted to, not because they made him. And then, after, he would walk away and never see any of them again. He would be alone, and safe, in the stars, where nobody could touch him.

He nodded to himself, slowly letting his body relax against the bunk. He would go back and get the Falcon out of storage, and he’d fly away, alone and safe. Just him and his ship. Wherever he wanted to go. Nobody to answer to. Nobody to question.

It took a long time to drift off to sleep, but at least his mind fell quiet. That was good enough.

**

It was impossible to avoid anyone on a ship this size. After the second or third awkward meeting in the bunks, or a hallway, or the mess, Han gave up and retreated to the cargo bay, where he sat between the sorted and labeled crates of scrap he would sell at the next station, and tried to pretend he was already somewhere else.

Chewie didn’t like the tension, Han could tell, but apparently neither one of them had any ideas about how to fix it. So Han stayed in the cargo bay between his crates, and Chewie brought him a bowl of food and a mug of something or other every once in a while. 

After three days of that, they were entering the sector that held the rendezvous point. Han found that out when Lando stormed into the cargo bay and threw a plate at his head.

“Get up.”

Han glared at him, noting that a split down the middle of the ship’s population hadn’t stopped the man from polishing his boots and producing a formal cape from somewhere. “Who’s gonna make me?”

“I am, and Chewie will back me up, because we all agree you’ve been sulking long enough.”

“Does _all_ include your little buddy Rook? I assume by this point you’ve fully seduced the kid and added a notch to your belt. Does he know that’s how it works? That he’s a number and a good time?”

He had never seen Lando throw a punch like that. Of course, he didn’t see it this time, either, it just hit him square in the face. 

He would like to think he held his own in the fight that followed, but if a truth serum was brought into it… well. Lando kicked his ass up one side of the cargo bay and down the other. Worse, when he was sprawled out on his stomach with Lando sitting on his back and hauling one of his arms back in an extremely painful hold that every planet’s native martial art had its own name for, Han saw that Chewie and Rook were both standing silently in the cargo bay door, watching without making the smallest gesture toward helping him out. 

So much for friendship.

“All right,” he said, spitting blood onto the flooring. “All right! Shit! Stop!”

“You yield?” Lando asked, yanking at his arm again, sending the tendons and muscles screaming.

“What else could I possibly mean?”

“And you’ll stop being a sullen piece of shit over the fact that we’re _not_ going to traffic child slaves?”

“That was never what I was mad about!”

“Then what _were_ you mad about?”

Han squirmed under him, trying to throw him off, but Lando’s weight was planted firmly, with no point of leverage. “It doesn’t matter!”

“Yes, it does!” Lando twisted his arm another few degrees. “Talk or I’m not letting you up. We have a right to know what the hell’s going on in your head, Solo.”

A fuse lit somewhere deep in Han’s belly, burning hot and fast enough to explode through his muscles and let him twist and kick, throwing Lando off-balance and letting him escape. He scrambled to his feet, breathing hard, stumbling backward to get his back against the bulkhead before any of the others could come at him. Chewie trilled in concern, but Han waved him off, keeping both hands up in a defensive gesture. 

“ _Nobody_ has a right to what’s in my head,” he said, his voice ragged and frantic in a way he didn’t want it to be but couldn’t help. “That’s _mine_. None of you have a right to it and you need to back _off_. I’m going to help those kids. I’m not stupid, and I’m not a monster, even though you act like I’m both. I’ve got a right to my secrets. I’ve got a right to my past and my stories. I don’t have to tell any of you _anything_. You got that?”

Lando faltered for a moment. “Shit, Han. None of us meant anything like that.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe you need to think a little more about what you’re saying, then.” Han pressed his hands over his eyes for a moment, then let go, blinking away the pressure echoes. “You know what we should do now?”

“I assure you I have absolutely no idea.”

“We should go break open those crates. See what it is we’re delivering.”

Lando shook his head. “We can’t. You know that. The crates are sealed, we’ve gotta deliver them sealed.”

“We’re going to stab Blue storm in the back, Lando. What does kicking them in the shins matter? Come on. We’ll seal them up again after we look, close enough that they won’t notice.”

“And if they _do_ notice?”

“Then we run faster.” Han stalked over to the crates, then walked a circle around them, studying the latches and seals. “Besides, what if we’ve already been hauling around something awful? What if there are kids in here, too, in carbonite or something?”

Lando sighed. “There would be a lot more warning labels if they held anything alive. Calm down, Han.”

“I’m calm! I’m perfectly calm!” Han kicked the end of the crate. “Chewie! Come over here and break this seal!”

Chewie gave a low trill of agreement and walked over, gently bumping Lando out of the way and drawing a laser cutter from his belt to break the seals. Han leaned in close to see as the seals fell apart and Chewie pulled the lid off; on Chewie’s other side, Lando was doing the same. Funny how they argued all the time but always ended up side by side by the end of things.

[Power crystals.] Chewie poked through the layers of crystals, each sealed in its own small cube of protective see-through cushioner. [Fifty, maybe? And six crates?]

“Three hundred power crystals.” Lando whistled softly. “If I were a lesser man, I would knock you both out and be on the run with these right now.”

“You could try.” Han stared into the crate. If he reached in and touched those cubes, he would start grabbing and then never stop running. “This is worth a fortune.”

“How much is Blue Storm paying you for delivering them?”

“A much smaller fortune.”

“Ha.” Lando rubbed the back of his neck. “Well. We’re delivering these and rescuing the kids. We already decided on that.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Han stepped back and nodded to Chewie. “Go ahead and close them back up, bud. Thank you.”

Lando fell back to Han’s side, eyes narrowed in thought. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Probably along the same lines but differing in specifics.”

“We shouldn’t.” Even without actually wearing one of his capes, Lando gave the impression that he was twitching one thoughtfully. “It exponentially increases the chances that we’re going to get ourselves killed.”

“We definitely, absolutely shouldn’t.”

Lando clicked his tongue. “Let’s go talk to Rook about what he might have tucked away in the storage rooms on this ship. Could be some surprises.”

“Are you sure you want to bring him into this any deeper than he already is?”

“ _Is_ there any deeper than he already is, Han?”

“I don’t know.” Han sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. “I feel bad about it. He’s just a kid, you know? And we’re going to get him liquidated by his employers. Probably fully liquidated, into a bucket on the floor.”

“I think he’s tougher than you’re giving him credit for.” Lando clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see if we can sketch out some kind of a plan. Can’t be worse than some of the other ones you’ve tried to pull in your life, can it?”

“Don’t challenge me like that, Calrissian.” Han sighed again and let himself be steered toward the cockpit. “Whoever wins, we all lose.”

**

What they pieced together didn’t look much like a plan, and it rattled ominously if you shook it (or, to be literal, thought about it too hard), but Han had walked into equally dangerous situations with worse. 

He and Chewie spent a few hours in the cargo bay working on the modifications and hands-on elements required, bickering softly until they ran out of things that needed doing and realized that they’d worked well into ship’s night.

Chewie bayed in a low tone and rubbed at his eyes. [Are you feeling any better about this?]

“Let’s not have that conversation now, huh? You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. Everything could explode at any minute.”

Chewie shook his head. [No, I triple-checked that we hadn’t armed anything yet. I’m not going to let you blow yourself up that easily.]

“Aw, thanks, buddy. I feel loved.” He jumped, startled, as Chewie’s paw landed firmly on his shoulder, then looked up as Chewie shook him insistently. “What?”

[You _are_ loved.] Another shake. [Don’t make a whole thing about it. But don’t forget it, either. I don’t want to have to tell you again.]

Han couldn’t think of a damn thing to say, but fortunately Chewie didn’t wait around to hear him say it. The Wookie stalked off toward the bunks and Han sat alone for a while, listening to the click and hum of the air circulators. 

When he’d allowed plenty of time either for Chewie to fall asleep or plausible deniability that he had, Han left the bay, hitting the switch to seal the door behind him and dim the lights. He moved more stiffly than he should, at his age; too much sitting on this trip, too much time in chairs or on the cold flooring. Not enough running for his life. He should try to remember some of the old Imperial fleet calisthenics, or something. Maybe Rook knew them. 

As if the thought of the man’s name conjured him up, Han heard Rook’s voice coming from the galley. “Lando—”

Apparently nobody was sleeping through ship’s night. Han turned on his heel toward the galley instead, chasing vague thoughts of alcohol and some conversation to keep solitude and dreams at bay. The acoustics of the corridor must have flattened the tone of Rook’s voice, though, because what he saw when he entered the room wasn’t the late-night chat he’d expected.

Lando was laid out on the table, Rook standing between the V of his legs, Rook’s hands in Lando’s, fingers entwined. Lando had pulled Rook forward to kiss him, arms outstretched midway to help him hold his balance. Lando’s leg was hooked across the back of both of Rook’s, holding him against the edge of the table. 

Rook pulled back from the kiss long enough to say a few more words, broken and dazed and something else, a feeling that Han had to fumble to find the word for. It was something he’d done his best to burn out of himself, even all the way out of his memories. _Yearning_.

Lando was talking now, low and quick. Han couldn’t make out the words, but he didn’t need to; whatever they were, they made Rook laugh, and smile—Han could only see that smile from a quarter-profile angle, but that was enough. Happiness, as essential and pure a type of it as Han had ever found in the galaxy. A type that didn’t require decadence, or someone else’s suffering. That didn’t have to be wrenched hard-won from an engine or bare rock or poisoned earth. Something that just flowered, and could be lifted up and carried away. Something that bloomed.

Han’s hand rose to his mouth, clamping down firm to keep any sound from escaping. He didn’t know what the sound would be—a wail of envy, an ugly jagged laugh, a plea to let him have this, too, to let him in—but he knew he didn’t want to shatter this moment. Not for anything.

He slid his feet backwards, slipping back from the doorway silently, without so much as a footstep on the flooring. He didn’t go to the bunks; he went to the ship’s little cubby-sized shower, where he could seal the door and muffle any of those sounds with both hands.

He kept himself more silent than he expected. Maybe he finally was burning all of those things out of himself. All the softness, all the weakness, the feeling. Maybe soon he would be the heartless mercenary he needed to be. 

Those were the only people who could survive. He’d seen it enough to know.

**

They approached the rendezvous coordinates the next day, all four of them irritable and avoiding eye contact, obviously running on little sleep and emotions that had been overextended and frayed.

There was another ship waiting at the coordinates, a sleek and souped-up Mtixlan frigate with elaborate mosaic-style images painted on the hull. “Blue Storm is based on Mtixla,” Lando said to no one in particular as Rook brought their freighter in closer. “I guess someone is homesick over there.”

“Nothing wrong with taking home wherever you go.” Han took a breath and reached for the comms headset as the frigate’s engines flared and it pulled back from their approach. Right; no criminal element with any sense would let an Imperial freighter get too close, even an old one that wasn’t making threads over Imperial channels if they didn’t stand down immediately.

“This is Entawa Six-Five,” he said, picturing the readouts from the data disk and reciting the script tucked away in them. “I’m looking for a droid who knows how to read the weather patterns. You got anything like that over there?”

There was a long pause before the frigate’s engines dimmed again. “Entawa Six-Five,” came a clipped, mechanical voice over the comms. “This is Mtixlan’ya Seven-Three. Welcome. We have no droids, but we know the weather better than most. Do you have stock to trade?”

“Absolutely.” Han scratched the back of his neck, glancing over at Lando and Chewie. They were both checking their weapons, gearing up. Perfect. “I’ll be bringing the stock and two backups.”

“One backup.”

“I need two to move the stock.”

“Unlikely. Based on our knowledge, only one will be required.”

Shit. Han drew a slow breath and held it behind his teeth for a moment, then let it go. Time to think on his feet. “We ran into some issues and had to divide things up differently.”

The tone changed instantly, mechanical inflection banished. “You broke the seals on the crates? You examined the cargo?”

“No, no, no.” Be a better, faster liar, Solo. “We redistributed the crates inside other crates. But that made them bulkier. So we need more people. Look, it’s not a big deal. Me, another human, a Wookie.”

“Yes, we were told about the Wookie.” There was a long silence. 

“Hello?” Han said finally. “Seven-Three, you still there? I can’t wait all day for that weather droid.”

“I told you, there is no damn droid,” the voice snapped. “Drop the nonsense. Fine, yes, you can bring two backups. Reposition yourself to connect an airlock and tunnel at our forward cargo hold. Entrance is lit in violet. We haven’t got all day either.”

Han thumbed the connection off and got to his feet. “Nice people. Fun to work with.”

“Well, they are trading in children,” Rook murmured, turning the ship to the required angle and beginning the process of moving it close enough to connect to the frigate. “Not the sort you want to invite over for dinner.”

“Good point.” Han took a deep breath and checked his own blaster, then looked at Lando and Chewie. “You ready for this? We’re all clear on the plan?”

“Absolutely,” Lando said. “Try not to get us killed.”

“Same to you.” Han nodded at Chewie, who trilled in agreement and followed the two humans to the cargo bay. They stood in a loose triangle formation, Han at the point, hands on the butts of their blasters, and watched the tunnel stretch out from the other ship to the bay doors.

It latched on to the surface of the freighter and the airlock began to cycle, balancing the pressure between the tunnel and the freighter. Han glanced at the waiting crates out of the corner of his eye. It was one of those jobs where he wished there were gods, or the Force, or anything out there in the uncaring universe that he could ask to help them out with this. There was a pretty good chance it was going to blow up in their faces, and even pretending they had something mystical backing them up would be a comfort.

But none of those did exist, and nothing was backing them up except Rook on the bridge, and that was just the way things were. Put it aside and keep going, Solo. Be ready to shoot first if you need to.

The airlock finished cycling, and dimly, through the tunnel, they heard the other airlock open. Five figures entered the tunnel, marching toward the freighter. They paused for the tunnel-side airlock door to open; they stepped inside. Lights and signal noises in the cargo bay, and then those doors opened, too.

“Hi there,” Han said brightly. “So glad to meet you at last.”

None of the five beings smiled. He sized them up quickly: three humans, two male, one female. Probably Mtixlan. One insectoid whose species he couldn’t place offhand. One Ontaathan in a full-body life support suit, a must for any methane-breather on the go. All had blasters drawn. None looked thrilled to be on an Imperial freighter, even this beat-up old bird.

“Where is the delivery?” the woman asked.

Han gestured at the crates. “We’re happy to move those over for you.”

“We will need to inspect them first.” She nodded to the insectoid, who skittered across the bay and circled the crates, clicking its mandibles intently. 

“Sonar?” Lando asked. The Blue Storm group ignored him, which was pretty rude, from where Han was standing. Lando had asked very politely. 

“I doubt sonar,” he said, shifting his weight to lean his body toward Lando a bit. “I think he’s just talking to himself. Or herself. What are the preferred pronouns for that species, do you know?”

The woman glared icily at him, but the Ontaathan answered, voice mechanical and heavy through the speaker built into the suit.

“Droneself. Drones are genderless and typically part of a hive mind. Tk’qritikk has been away from the homeworld long enough to function as an individual, but drone is an important part of drone’s identity.”

“Thank you for clearing that up,” Han said, offering his best smile. “I truly appreciate it.”

“We’re not here to chit-chat or run a sociology course,” the woman said. “Shut up and help drone check the crates, Mar.”

Han watched the inspection, trying to keep his breathing level and his posture relaxed. The woman definitely had the air of someone trained to look for indicators of shiftiness in the people she worked with. If Mar the Ontaathan and at least one of the humans weren’t running a long game to betray her that she was fully aware of, he would eat his sock.

“These crates have been opened and re-sealed, as reported,” Mar said. “The inner crates, however, seem to be intact, also as reported. I believe we can consider the cargo acceptable to transport, and continue the handoff with these contractors.”

“Contractors,” Lando said, flashing another smile. “I haven’t heard that one in a while. Quaint.”

Mar turned to face him with an unmistakable air of curiosity. Some things crossed species lines well, and Han never ceased to marvel at it. “Do you not consider yourself an independent contractor?”

“Not for tax purposes, my friend.”

There was a pause, and then Mar and one of the human men erupted in laughter. Han was pretty sure Tk’qritikk was laughing, too; the rapid click of drone’s feet against the floor had a mirthful kind of cadence to it.

“Tax purposes!” Mar’s mechanical voice produced laughter and amusement with an odd metallic ring. “How clever!”

“ _Enough_!” the woman shouted. “Have you all lost your minds? Do you want me to report you to the chief officer? Get those crates across the airlock!”

Laughter and clicking stopped abruptly. Tk’qritikk and Mar moved over to begin activating the antigrav moving systems on the pallets, and Han signaled Chewie to help them out while he made his way to the woman’s side.

“Han Solo,” he said, offering his hand. “Could I get your name? Makes it easier to communicate when we’re all on some form of a name basis, I’ve found.”

She gave his hand one brief up-down pump and let go like it was slimy. “Anga Sul. These are Jellen Klum and Galen Rel.” 

“Nice to meet you all,” Han said, nodding to the men. “This is Lando Calrissian, and the Wookie is Chewbacca. Now that we’re properly introduced, let’s talk terms.”

Anga frowned, her gaze flicking toward the airlock for just an instant. “Terms were already set.”

Ah-ha. Han let himself smile on the inside. Got a little bit of doubt in what her chief officer over there was telling her. “There’s always room for negotiation, isn’t there?”

Her hand went to the butt of her blaster. “There most certainly is not. Follow those crates across the airlock, Solo. You too, Calrissian. We need to do a biometric scan before we transfer the first half of the credits and the next stage of the cargo to you.”

“Yeah, about that.” Han fell into step alongside her, knowing without looking that Lando was a pace behind him and a little to his left. Flanking clean. “Can you tell me a little about this next stage of cargo? And where we’re expected to deliver it? This is a hell of a lot of unknowns for a small operation like ours, you know.”

“Your operation is not my concern.”

“It’s the concern of whoever hired us, because we’re talking a level of unknowns that might compromise our ability to deliver as promised.”

Anga stopped sharply and turned to face him. “You _will_ deliver as promised. I don’t care if you have to crawl on your knees dragging the cargo with your teeth. You _will_ deliver. Blue Storm does not tolerate failure, Solo. Do you understand me?”

Every fiber in Han’s being was telling him to lash out preemptively, and then run. He pictured roots growing from his heels into the flooring, holding him still. Couldn’t give an inch to these syndicate types. They wouldn’t take a mile; they’d take your liver.

“I understand how a contract works, yes,” he answered. “But I also need to know where I’m hauling this stuff, and it would be _useful_ to know what it is. I got my fill of unknown cargo with the first stage of this little game.”

Anga snorted, breaking eye contact to rub at her jaw. “Poor choice of words, Solo. It’s anything but a game.”

Han waited a beat, but she started walking again without another word. “Care to expand on that?” he asked, hurrying to reach her side.

“I don’t, actually. If you’re foolish enough to sign on for a Blue Storm job with the naivete of thinking you’re playing a game, then you deserve what you get.”

“All right, I deserve that.” He heard Lando take a deliberately heavy step, a reminder to get the hell back on track. Maybe he deserved that, too. “Delivery destination. Basic cargo parameters. Can you give me that? Please?”

Maybe it was the please that did it, or maybe it was just that they’d reached the cargo bay. Anga came to a halt again to watch Mar and Tk’qritikk guide the pallet transport into place and kill the antigravs. “Jellen, Galen, help them unload,” she said. “Take care with the Wookie. I don’t want either of you losing an arm.” When they moved to obey, she turned back to Han and Lando. “Follow me.”

She led them across the cargo bay to a datascreen embedded in a waist-height podium next to a sealed door. Tapping in a passcode, she nodded at the door. “Your cargo’s in there.”

Han braced himself and went over to the door, waiting for the seal to clear and the hull-grade metal to slide aside. When it did, he made himself breathe before he looked, bracing himself for terrified children clinging to each other, or something worse—drugged, maybe, or too traumatized to react at all.

There was none of that. He blinked and stepped across the threshold, trying to square his expectations with the reality.

The children were floating in bacta tanks, motionless in the thick fluid, regular streams of bubbles rising from the oxygen masks fixed over their noses and mouths. Their eyes were closed, and the vital signs showing on the monitors for each tank showed lowered but regular readings. 

“They’re sedated for transport, obviously,” Agna said, entering the room behind him and elbowing him aside. “A constant dosage to ensure their safety and comfort. There are fourteen of them. The bacta tanks each have their own generators, hard-wired, and enough power to last five days. I suggest you don’t take more than that five days to reach the delivery point, or you will have some problems on your hands.”

“We can plug the tanks into the ship’s main power,” Han said. It didn’t feel like he was saying it; there was some kind of detached, capable Han who kept running the gig while the real Han was staring at those helpless bodies suspended in bacta. The real Han was screaming and screaming and might never stop. It was good of detached Han to come along for the ride, even if he was a soulless son of a bitch.

“You can. That’s true. But the sedative supply will also only last five days. I don’t think you want them awake and struggling in the bacta. Very inconvenient.” Agna circled the room, checking each monitor carefully. “They’re all in perfect health, so you don’t have any need to worry about them. The Blue Storm agents you deliver them to are prepared to help them through reemergence and recovery from transit, with a full medical center at hand. Your job is strictly transport and not screwing anything up. Understood?”

“Absolutely.” Han stepped back, trying to find his way to the threshold without looking away from the children. Detached Han was functioning better than real Han, but he still felt like he shouldn’t look away, like there was some kind of value in bearing witness. “What are their ages? Their names?”

“That’s irrelevant. The agents waiting to accept delivery have the necessary information without it passing through your hands.” Agna looked pointedly past him to the cargo bay. “If you don’t mind going back outside, I need to get clearance from the chief officer that we’re ready to proceed.”

Han obediently took another step backward. “What could possibly keep us from proceeding now?”

“I don’t pretend to anticipate the whims of the chief officer.” She stared at him even more pointedly, and he finally reached the cargo bay with enough clearance for her to move past him and seal the door in his face.

Lando moved to Han’s side, his hand closing around Han’s elbow. It was steadying, and Han was grateful for it, as the two temporarily separated halves of himself had to fit back into each other again. 

“What’s the situation?” Lando asked quietly.

“Fourteen kids. In bacta tanks. Sedated. We have five days.” Rook should have heard that, through the transmitter fixed in the collar of Lando’s jacket. It was enough information for him to start calculating routes and destinations. 

“Can we get moving?” Lando turned away slightly, tracking the two human men as they crossed the bay toward Agna. “The longer we’re on their turf the less I like it.”

“I agree. She’s getting permission to proceed.” Han took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We can’t do the thing until we have the kids safely on our ship, with the bacta tanks stowed properly. No evasive maneuvers if everything isn’t locked down.”

“Shit. That’s going to be tricky.” Lando drummed his fingers against Han’s elbow; he was still holding on, and Han was still grateful for it. “We’re going to be dancing on the edge, here.”

“Rook?” Han kept his voice low. “You reading all this?”

Across the cargo bay, Chewie raised one arm toward the ceiling like he was stretching it and pumped his fist twice. Rook’s outgoing transmitter was fastened to his bandolier. Separating things out for safety’s sake required a lot of extra codes and complications.

“Okay.” Han turned his attention back to Agna as she approached. “Are we trusted to keep up our errand-boy gig?”

“Something like that.” She handed him a data disk. “This has the codes to get your first half payment transferred. I suggest you don’t lose it. It’s a one-time command that can’t be replicated. But it can’t be revoked, either, so you have that going for you.”

It was the only time Han had ever been thankful for the Empire taking over official banking systems and making them hopeless bureaucratic messes: customers who didn’t want to pay in cash had no choice but using stupid-ass systems like this where if he got screwed, so did they. It was one of the few things that made him wonder if there was a force for good in the universe.

He tucked the disk away in his shirt pocket and nodded at the sealed door leading to the kids. “Is your team going to help transport those over? It’ll go faster with extra hands. And whatever Tk’qritikk has.”

She rolled her eyes but nodded, gesturing at her crew, and they sprang into smooth, practiced action. Probably just reversing the process by which they’d set up the horror show of children suspended in bacta in the first place. 

Chewie and Lando moved to assist, and Han was left standing alone in the cargo bay, one hand on his blaster, watching the six of them slowly load the tanks onto antigrav transports for the trip across the connector. The power units on the tanks were visible now that they were out in the open, showing battery levels and slow-blinking green and blue lights indicating that all systems were operating in acceptable ranges. Han wondered what display showed the level of sedative left. The four of them who were going to be making the next stage of this trip would need to know if they were going to have bacta-sick, terrified children going through withdrawal on them.

The antigrav held six tanks at a time, meaning that three trips were needed. It was an agonizing sequence. Han gripped his blaster handle so hard his fingers ached, trying to stay calm during the stretches where his crew, the Blue Storm crew, and a load of kids were out of sight on the other side of the connector, being moved and stowed away on Rook’s ship. 

The third trip only had two tanks, but seemed like it took even longer than the others. Sweat beaded up at Han’s hairline and dripped down his face, like his body was choking on its own stress and taunting him with it. Agna stood expressionless at the little podium, tapping away at data displays like she didn’t have a care in the world. Han was going to either spit or have a heart attack if something didn’t _happen_ here, soon.

Finally, the antigrav unit came back through the airlock, the Tk’qritikk steering it and the other five people wandering along behind. Lando and Chewie came to Han’s side, Chewie’s paw settling on his shoulder in a light brush of reassurance before the Wookie settled in his defensive stance a stride away.

“Why’d that take so long?” Han asked Lando quietly.

Lando shrugged, his eyes on the Blue Storm crew as they spoke to Agna. “We had them triple-check everything and walk us through the basics on how the bacta tanks work. We don’t want to get caught ignorant out there.”

“Oh.” Han silently kicked himself. “Good thinking.”

“Mm.” Lando’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m getting a bad feeling and it keeps getting worse. We need to move. Soon.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Han turned back to face the Blue Storm group and clapped his hands. “Well! We’re going to get on our way, then. No more to discuss here, I don’t think.”

Agna eyed him stonily. “We haven’t given you the data for the delivery point yet.”

_Fuck_ these people. “You want to do that, then? Time’s wasting, and we only have five days on those power units.”

“That you do.” She produced a second data disk and handed it over. “Unencrypted, since the cargo is its own security now.”

“Pardon?”

“If you try to make off with the cargo, or betray us, or get caught in transit, you’ll be found guilty of human trafficking. That’s an execute on sight crime by Imperial standards.” Agna folded her arms across her chest. “The chief officer estimates that to mean that your best incentive is to deliver the cargo as quickly as possible and draw no attention to yourself. I’m inclined to agree.”

Han forced his shoulders to relax. That wasn’t anything they hadn’t already known. “Always a pleasure working with the syndicate. Or something like that.”

“Your pleasure is of little interest to us, but I’ll pass that along.” She turned to her crew. “Seal the airlock behind them and retract the connector, Mar. We also need to be on our way.”

Han did his best to swagger across the cargo bay and through the connector; this was a good time to look confident in himself and his crew, like they all knew what they were doing and were very secure in their criminalhood. Lando was managing a decent strut himself. Chewie was groaning under his breath and half-running, but two out of three weren’t bad.

“Deep breaths, gentlemen,” Han said as they stepped into Rook’s ship’s airlock. “We’ve got three more steps in Plan A and then we can implement the other Plan A.”

“Unless everything blows up and we switch to Plans B through… where did we stop again? K?” Lando shook his head. “I’m not as confident as you are, Solo.”

“I’m not confident at all, buddy. The fact that you thought I was gives me hope, though.” Han pulled the heavy release guard and hit the button to seal the airlock. “Chewie, get up to the cockpit. I can hear the engines humming already and that means Rook needs a co-pilot.”

[When are you going to activate the bombs?] Chewie was apparently flat out of small talk and patience both. 

“Once we’re clear of the blast radius, unless you have a better idea.” That earned him a snarl. “Get going, then! We’re not out of the damn woods yet!”

Chewie stormed off toward the bridge, still snarling, and Han followed Lando over to the bacta tanks. “They’re good and locked down?”

“Check them yourself if you don’t believe me.” Lando started moving another antigrav transport, this one carrying empty storage crates that must have been sitting around waiting for their next load of Imperial cargo. “I think if I place these here and here it’ll add some extra structure to protect the tanks.”

Han visualized the plan and then nodded, joining him in placing the crates. “You trust that Rook found us somewhere to go?”

“He said he could.” Lando powdered down the antigrav units and let the transport settle on the floor. “He hasn’t let us down yet, has he?”

“We haven’t known him for very long, either.”

“I can’t answer this one for you, Han. Go up there and ask him.” 

“Are you coming with me?”

Lando looked at him for a minute, then nodded. “I guess there’s not actually much else to do down here. I just feel strange about leaving them all alone.”

“I know what you mean.” Han rubbed his jaw, trying not to look directly at the silent bodies floating in the bacta. “They don’t actually need watching over, but it feels…”

“Like we’re abandoning them.” Lando shook his head. “Getting them somewhere safe is the more important thing, I guess. Come on.”

On the bridge, they found Chewie piloting the ship in a slow arc away from the Mtixlan vessel while Rook rapidly scrolled through a data screen, scowling at whatever it was telling him. “What have you got?” Lando asked, moving to stand at his shoulder. “We’ve got five days, we should be able to get pretty much anywhere worth going.”

“Mm.” Rook stopped scrolling and tapped quickly at the keypad. “We don’t want to go somewhere worth going, though, do we? We want to go somewhere invisible and forgettable.”

“Where did _they_ want us to take them?” Han asked. “That’s where a bunch of syndicate mercenaries are going to be waiting and getting angry when we don’t show up. So we probably want to be in the opposite direction of them.”

“Not the opposite. That’s the first thing they’ll expect.” Rook closed whatever he’d been looking at and scrolled again. “We want to be on a point at, oh, a fifteen or twenty-five degree angle from them, if you picture them and us on a flat circle. Point to point distance is less important than the angle, I think, here…”

Han blinked. “What?”

“Mm…” Rook looked up, blinking. “Picture the galaxy as a flat circle, that you can divide into wedges anywhere with lines emerging off the center point at a given angle from an initial line you designate zero. If the Blue Star rendezvous point they’re expecting us at is on zero, we want to be on a line fifteen to twenty-five degrees away, but _where_ on that line is less relevant. Could go directly to the core, could go out to the very rim. Doesn’t matter much.”

“He’s smarter than you, Han,” Lando said. “Just go with it.”

There didn’t seem to be any very good reason to argue with that. “How are we doing in terms of distance from the Mtixlan ship, Chewie? Can I blow things up yet?”

[I would prefer to have a destination first.] Chewie looked back over his shoulder at Rook. [Better if that’s plugged in so we can hit hyperspace as soon as the explosions start.]

“Maybe even use the wave from the explosion for a little extra push.” Rook smiled at Chewie. 

[That might shake this thing to pieces.]

“Nah, she can take it. She’s a good girl.” Rook dropped his gaze back to the screen and tapped something open again. “Oh, well. This is too much of a sign to pass up. The Force is with us.”

Han moved closer, trying to see over Lando’s shoulder. “It’s not, but tell me anyway.”

“No time. Trust me.” Rook turned his chair to the main control panel and started punching in coordinates. “Chewbacca, power up the drive when ready, and then count Han off to begin detonation.”

“There’s not really a beginning and an end to it.” Han pulled the remote detonator out of his pocket and studied it. “I just push the button and it happens.”

“Exactly how many thermal detonators did you pack in with the power crystals?” Rook asked, his eyes still fixed on the control panel.

“We found six in the storage closet.” Han rolled the detonator between his fingers. “Two each in two of the crates, one in the third, and one saved for emergencies.”

“And they’re all going to go at once? Not in a sequence?”

“I figured the bigger the boom, the more fun.” Han moved carefully up to look out the window at the front of the cockpit. The Mtixlan ship was turned away from them, moving at a steady pace. A binary star system shone beautifully off in the distance. A nebula was dancing in shades of red and violet.

“We ready to ride a blast wave, Chewie?” Han asked, rubbing his thumb along the edge of the button.

Chewie gave a low, thoughtful trill and nodded.

The view really was beautiful. If it was the last thing any of them ever saw, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

He pressed the button.

**

Safe in hyperspace, they all relaxed for the first time in weeks, which meant they all basically fell down. Lando produced a bottle of liquor from somewhere nonspecific; his greatest personal gift, as far as Han was concerned. They lay there on the cockpit floor, Chewie keeping one eye on the controls, the rest of them motionless except for passing the bottle.

“Well,” Lando said finally. “Well, well.”

“Do you feel special, Rook?” Han asked dreamily. 

Rook was lying with his head on Lando’s thigh. Han couldn’t say anything; his own was resting on Chewie’s thigh. “In what sense?”

“Well, it’s not every Imperial freight pilot who gets himself on Blue Storm’s kill list _twice_.” He held up two fingers. “Once for ripping them off and once for blowing up their shit.”

Rook shook his head slightly and took a drink, then passed the bottle up to Lando. “They never saw me, remember? And none of you mentioned my name. I’m still in the clear.”

“Dammit.” Han looked at Lando. “Why didn’t we make sure to smear his name too? That was pretty stupid of us.”

“I can’t believe blowing the cargo actually worked.” Lando took a long drink, closing his eyes. “I really thought they would figure it out. I expect better from Blue Storm. Criminals aren’t what they used to be.”

“Well, the Empire’s nosing into their niche. What can you do?” Han held his hand out for the bottle, snapping his fingers impatiently. “I need it. I’m the one who pressed the button that could’ve killed us, here.”

“It wasn’t going to kill us.”

“We didn’t _really_ know how the power crystals would amplify the blast. It was an educated guess.” Chewie elbowed him in the head and trilled warningly. “What? You’re the one who _made_ the guess, furball!”

[You were supposed to keep that between us,] Chewie said sourly. [I don’t want everyone thinking I’m as crazy and irresponsible as you.]

“I’m not irresponsible!” Rook and Lando emitted choked-back gasps of laughter simultaneously, and Han sat upright to glare at them. “I’m not! Look at what we pulled off here today! Could an irresponsible person do that?”

“You would be amazed,” Lando said, but he finally handed over the bottle. “Now what?”

“That is the question, I suppose.” Han took a drink and looked at Rook again. “You going to tell us where we’re going, now that we’re well on our way there?”

“Oh. Right.” Rook rubbed at his temples, a smile playing at his lips. “Well, I looked on those fifteen, twenty, twenty-five degree angle lines, as we said. In each direction, mind you, negative and positive on the circle. And when I saw it, I just couldn’t believe it. It was obviously a sign that the Force was looking out for us.”

“If it existed, I’m sure it wouldn’t bother looking out for us,” Han said. “But get to the part where you name a planet already.”

Rook’s smile widened. “I haven’t been home in an age. It will be nice to see Jedha again.”

Han stared at him, his mind whirling with the image of a dry, weary dustball planet that didn’t make anything but Khyber crystals and sullen monks. “Jedha? What the hell are these kids gonna do on Jedha?”

“The Empire is strip-mining Jedha,” Lando said, shaking his head. “That can’t possibly be safe for them, can it? Why would we put them right in the Empire’s hands?”

“The Empire isn’t the one looking for them, remember? An Imperial presence keeps them safer from Blue Storm,” Rook reached for this tablet, tapping here and there, then pulled up an image of Jedha. He touched the image, zooming out to show a wider view that included the planet’s moon. “But no, we won’t put them directly into Imperial hands, either. The Empire’s focused on Jedha City, where the crystals have always been kept. The Guardians of the Whills, all the old stories, the religious orders… those are all in Jedha City. There’s the whole rest of the planet to consider. And…” He touched the screen again and zoomed in to show a small colony on the Jedhan moon. “Here.”

They waited for him to go on, but he just smiled up at them, content as a monkey-lizard resting there on Lando’s thigh. If his teeth weren’t so perfect, Han would’ve knocked them in. “What’s there?”

“Really? You don’t see it? It’s so simple, though.”

Lando sighed. “Bodhi, please. It’s been a long day.”

“All right, all right. You’ve got your monks and the Guardians, down in Jedha City.” He zoomed in still further. “And here on the moon, with space for silence and contemplation, you have a small, spinoff group of, essentially, since their true name wouldn’t mean anything to you, Force nuns.”

They both stared at him. Han wasn’t sure, but he thought he could feel Chewie’s body shake with laughter. 

“Force nuns,” Lando echoed finally. “Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s a lovely, self-sustaining cloister, surrounded by villages.” Rook touched a point on the screen and expanded a view of a single building. “And as many people dedicated to good works do, they run an orphanage.”

Han put his head down again, this time on his own knees. “You want to take those kids out of the bacta and leave them on a Jedhan moon in a Force nunnery orphanage.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Rook stretched out his leg and nudged Han in the ribs. “I’m more than willing to drop out of hyperspace and change course, but you’d better pick a new destination soon, as we’re burning our five days.”

“I _don’t_ have a better idea, I just want to make it clear I’m not sure this is a _good_ idea.”

“He has a point, though,” Lando said. “Blue Storm will avoid Jedha to keep from accidentally tripping an Imperial turf war. The Empire has no reason to look at a tiny orphanage on an unproductive moon. I think the kids will be okay there.”

Han rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Chewie. “What do you think?”

Chewie trilled softly, thinking. [There’s nowhere safer that comes to mind. Which isn’t saying much. It’s a dangerous galaxy these days.]

“When you’re right, you’re right.” Han looked at Rook and Lando again and nodded. “Okay. Let’s give it a shot. Off to Jedha.”

“Not off to anywhere,” Rook said. “We’re already on our way. I decided this a while ago without any of your input, you might recall.”

“If we weren’t in debt to you for our lives in about five different ways, I would punch you in the mouth.” Han got to his feet, groaning a little as his body reminded him of the stress and tension lingering in his muscles. “I need a vacation. Somewhere warm, with massages and alcohol.”

“Technically Jedha meets those requirements.” Rook hid a smile as he stood as well, then moved up to check the control boards in the front of the cockpit. 

Lando smirked, watching him. “I’ve never heard of Jedhan massage. Tell me more.”

Rook bent close to the panel, tracing their projected route with his fingers. “The patient is pelted with hot stones. Then the stones are rolled around the body, with particular attention paid to anywhere that bruises.” He glanced up and blinked at them. “I didn’t say it was a popular form of massage. Just that it exists.”

“I’ll skip it, if it’s all the same to you,” Han said. “But Lando’s into that kind of kinky thing.”

Lando took a halfhearted swing at him as he walked by. “Mind your own business, Solo.” 

“I’m gonna go check on the kids.” He made his way back through the ship, listening to the creaks and groans of the stress hyperspace was putting on it. They weren’t the familiar sounds of the Falcon, but he knew enough about ships in general to know this old tin can would hold together for at least a little while longer. Long enough for them to get where they were going.

The bacta tanks were lit only by their own built-in, half-powered lights, casting an eerie blue-green glow over the bodies floating inside them. Han made his way down the row slowly, checking the power levels on each and watching the children float for a few minutes, searching their faces for any sign of awareness or pain.

Fortunately there was nothing. He didn’t have a plan if one of them woke up mid-trip. He didn’t know anything about kids, and he never would, if he had anything to say about it. There were enough bad parents in the universe without him adding himself to the list out of some kind of misguided arrogance about the worthiness of his DNA.

Besides, the only woman he might ever want to have them with was lost to him now, and he wasn’t likely to find anyone else who understood him or… forget _love_ , that was a myth. Anyone else who liked having him around in the medium to long run.

Well. Except Chewie. But there were some biological obstacles there.

He knew he ought to head to the bunks and get some sleep, but suddenly the idea of walking even that far was too much for him. Besides, it didn’t feel right to leave the kids alone like this. Stupid, sentimental thoughts; he knew better than that. But he was too tired to push them aside this time.

He stretched out on the floor at an angle where he could see all the tanks to some degree, folding his arms under the back of his head and staring up at the pipes and tubing that made up the cargo bay ceiling. It was quiet, except for the humming of power and oxygen throughout the ship and the separate, higher-pitched hum of the bacta tanks.

If he fell asleep in this position he was going to wake up with a hell of a sore neck and pain all up and down his spine. Stupid.

He stayed anyway. It just didn’t feel right to leave the kids alone.

**

The settlement on the Jedhan moon was one of the more hardscrabble, frontier-facing little dens of misery Han had ever come across. But the people were clearly here to stay: every house was held together with adobe, spit, and prayer, but each also had a little piece of hominess and defiance. A stand of white flowers here, brightly colored hand-woven curtains there, a suncatcher made of polished bits and pieces of some old dead droid on the next. 

Corellia was the absolute opposite of this place. Han had grown up urban poor, not dirt-poor. But he recognized those little gestures, the signs of determination to keep going no matter how hard the powers that be tried to stomp you into the ground. At his childhood home, it had been his mother’s insistence on keeping the windows scrubbed perfectly clean. She didn’t want them to live in dingy darkness.

“The orphanage is that way,” Rook said, bringing Han back to the moment. Lando and Chewie had stayed with the ship, looking over the bacta tanks until they could be moved to the orphanage. Assuming the nuns agreed to take them in at all, which was Han and Rook’s mission. Be charming, explain the situation while leaving out plenty of incriminating details, get the kids a safe haven. 

Then all four of them would move the tanks into that haven, give suggestions on how to help the kids transition back to wakefulness, and get the hell out.

As plans went, it wasn’t Han’s best, but it wasn’t his worst, either. Even Lando had had to agree about that.

He walked down the street next to Rook, who was studying the settlement with a slight smile on his face. “Is this what it’s like down on the planet, too?” Han asked after a moment.

“Not Jedha City,” Rook said. “But out in the villages, yes. In the mountains. They’re doing very well here.”

Han looked around. “This is doing very well?”

“Yes.” Rook shrugged. “You haven’t seen it before, you don’t have anything to compare it to. But they have the solar grids and moisture evaporators up and running at efficiency, you can tell. Before there wasn’t enough water to have flowers.”

“Oh.” He had a real gift for putting his foot it with Rook. Might as well take that all the way to a logical conclusion. “So, you and Lando.”

Rook glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. “What about it?”

“I don’t know. How’s that going to work out when we leave here? Are you going to desert the Empire and run off with him? Is he going to join up and stay with you? Are you just going to shake hands and say it’s been fun, see you around the galaxy?”

Rook laughed softly and gestured for Han to turn down a rutted side street. “We haven’t made a plan, honestly. But probably not the first two things you suggested. It will look something like the third.”

“That doesn’t bother you? That you’re just going to have to throw it away?”

Another soft laugh, and a shrug. “We knew that from the beginning. It’s always been borrowed time.”

“Why _can’t_ you desert? I did. It hasn’t worked out too badly.”

No laughter this time, and Rook’s smile had faded. “Perhaps I’m not as brave as you.”

“It wasn’t bravery. It was sheer stupidity, I swear.” Han reached over and caught him by the arm, pulling him to a stop. “Rook, if you want out, we can help you. We’ll show you how to hide out til it blows over, how to get fake identity chips, how to make a living on the run. Hell, you probably couldn’t have a better teacher than Lando.”

Rook shook his head. “That’s not my way. I have a term of service, and I’ll see it out. Maybe it’s not bravery, like you said, but I don’t have that… that spark. I’m a simple man, Han. I can only walk the path in front of me, not run off into the wilderness.”

Han stood for a moment, then released Rook’s arm. “I don’t know why, but hearing you say that makes me sad as hell, Rook. I think you could do better if you tried.”

“There isn’t any time for this now.” Rook squared his shoulders and started walking again, at a faster pace, and Han fell in behind him. There really wasn’t any time, and anyway, he was out of things to say.

**

The Jedhan nuns were not impressed with them in the slightest, and especially not with the fact that Rook had told some random outsiders of their existence. 

“We support our community, Bodhi,” the mother superior said sternly. She had placed herself on a first-name basis with Rook from the moment they were brought into her presence. It wasn’t the first-name basis of equals, but more like a matriarch and a careless grandson. Han kept his mouth shut and devotedly hoped she wouldn’t speak to him at all. “We can’t take in strays from all over the galaxy. Our resources would be strained to breaking in no time at all.”

“I understand, Mother,” Rook said. “I truly do. But these children were going to be delivered to slavery. I couldn’t allow that, surely you understand?”

“Of course I understand.” She shifted in her chair, pulling her robes closely about herself. “But how are we to feed them? Care for them? The resources of our community are _limited_ , Bodhi, and you propose to add ten bodies upon them.”

Rook smiled, a gleam in his eye that Han recognized a little too well. That was a one of Lando’s expressions. “Mother, you forget that I am Jedhan, too, and can reach out to my clan’s ears and mouths as well as you can. I know for a fact that six children aged out of the monastery only a month ago and went out to make their way in the galaxy. And I know that no more have come in. So you have a capacity for six of the ten with no changes.”

The mother superior’s eyes had narrowed into slits. “Perhaps this is true. That still leaves four additional bodies for us to care for.”

“At least four of the children are old enough to assist with the solar panels and moisture evaporators once they are settled. They can learn a valuable trade and contribute to their own upkeep, while assisting in the support of the nunnery.” His smile widened a bit. “Besides, Mother, to be perfectly blunt, the bank accounts of your order are more than robust enough to take on four children, and it’s a very bad look for your piety that you would argue otherwise. I’m disappointed.”

“What do you know about our _bank accounts_ , Bodhi Rook?”

“The official ones? Nothing.” Even his smile was like Lando’s, now. “The secret ones you run through a shell corporation and a bank based on Od-Nel VII, well… my uncle’s cousin knows a young woman who works there.”

One of the nuns started to laugh, and the mother superior whipped around to glare at her. The woman shrugged helplessly, holding her palms up. “A clan has many ears and mouths, Mother. Admit he’s bested you and let us bring the children in. We have the room, and the Force must be ringing in your ears to remind you it’s our duty and privilege both.”

The mother superior stared at her for an icy moment, then at Rook again, then at Han. “I do hate to be outplayed,” she said finally. “But I suppose every once in a while someone has to come along and remind me to sharpen my game. Bring the children. We’ll have everything set up by the time you get here. Then get off this moon and out of my sight.”

Han and Rook bowed deeply and turned to go. The mother superior’s voice followed them out of the room. 

“And Bodhi, if you clan saw it in their hearts to tithe a healthy bit to that account this year, it will be noted far more favorably in the Books of the Whills than any of you deserve.”

**

Rook couldn’t take them all the way back to the Falcon. He had been off the Imperial grid far longer than was safe, though he didn’t seem particularly concerned about it.

“In a system as big as the Imperial fleet, there are plenty of gaps you can slip into,” he said. “I’m very good at finding them. Don’t worry about me.”

Fair enough, and likely true, but Han was itching to be done with this, back on his own ship, and heading for somewhere he chose with his own free will. Settling for a midway point and then hitchhiking back to Qu’bar to pick up the Falcon was an excruciating delay, but apparently he wasn’t getting a choice in the matter unless he held a gun to Rook’s head. By this point he liked the guy too much to do that, so he was stuck.

They agreed that Rook would take him and Chewie back to Entawa Station, where they could hop a shuttle to Qu’bar and be done with it. It was bringing this whole mess of a job full circle, back to how it began, and Han hated that with every fiber of his being. Symmetry was the same as being predictable, and it suggested that the universe had a hand in things in a way he didn’t like at all. 

But it wasn’t like he had any better ideas.

“What are you going to do?” he asked Lando while the ship cut through the stars. “I know you like the kid, but he’s not going to quit the Fleet and you’re not going to join it. You’re not really the military type.”

“About as much as you are.” Lando flashed a grin and stretched his legs out in front of him. “I’ll see if I can win myself a ship at Entawa. If not, maybe I’ll ride along to the Imperial port and see what I can find there. Luck will catch up to me eventually, you know? She’s been ignoring me for too long now, she’s gotta come back.”

Han shook his head. “If you say so.”

“What about you? You have a plan for the next while?”

“Just going until I stop.” Han closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the ship around them. “The only way I know how to do it.”

They fell into a mutual, more or less comfortable silence. It was a shared philosophy, after all. Nothing else to say.

**

Rook’s orders came through just before they reached Entawa. He had a port to log in at and a very narrow window of time to do it. Suddenly all of their sketched-in, lazy plans were very real and needed to happen right away.

The goodbyes at the station were clipped. Chewie piloted the freighter in while Rook and Lando took a moment of privacy, just the two of them. Han handled the airlock and docking himself to give them an extra minute and avoid thinking about the unhappy twist in his own stomach. He had stupidly hoped there might be a twist left in their story, like maybe Rook would decide to run after all, or Lando would come up with some kind of disguise that would slip him past the Imperial fleet’s regulations. Something. Han had thought that maybe someone somewhere would get a happy ending.

Lando kissed Rook right there at the edge of the airlock, pulling him close and holding the back of his head like he was something precious, kissing him like he wanted to remember. Han had to look away. It was too much. Too much… feeling, too much real and raw substance, for out here and the life they all lived. There was no way it could ever survive.

Lando walked off the ship without a word or a look back, not even for Han or Chewie. Han could forgive it this once. Too damn much feeling.

Rook wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and looked up as Chewie moved to Han’s side. “Well. It’s been good traveling with you both. I won’t forget you. Either of you.”

“You’re not bad yourself, Rook.” Han shook his hand, avoiding his eyes, and then stepped back so Chewie could swing him into a hug. “Take care of yourself out there. Don’t let the Empire get you down.”

Rook caught him by the arm, squeezing until Han finally met his eyes. “You’re a good man, Han Solo. Don’t forget.”

Han pulled away, shaking his head. “You still don’t know me. You don’t know anything.”

He walked briskly across the connector, keeping his eyes fixed ahead, barely able to relax even when he felt the vibrations under his feet as Chewie followed.

“He’s wrong,” Han said once they reached the station side. “He doesn’t know me.”

Chewie rumbled gently. [He doesn’t, that’s true. But he’s still right. You’re a good man.]

“No I’m not.” Han blinked rapidly, turning toward the shuttle port. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry and there was sweat in his eyes or something. They stung.

What a load of shit. Good and bad, like those meant anything in the cold vacuum of the universe.

“I’m not good,” he said, weaving his way through the crowd. “I’m just me. Just out for myself. You’ll see, Chewie. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, and you’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _What the hell am I gonna do now?_  
>  What the hell am I gonna do now?  
> I was born and raised in an earthquake state  
> So I'm better on shaky ground.  
> \- Ruston Kelly, "Faceplant"


End file.
